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Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

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Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#11

Post by HexDecOctBin »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #9
driggs wrote: post #7

Anyone who can't see past Python's indentation-based syntax is a person who doesn't understand Python. (Both literally and figuratively!) When "significant whitespace" is at the top of someone's complaints about Python, I'm immediately done hearing about their superficial criticism of the language.

When I hear someone complain about the whitespace thing, it sends a message to me that they do not format their code well and just go willy-nilly on their indentation. If you're properly indenting code, then it always works as intended . Proper indentation doesn't come from a desire to make the code work, it comes from a desire to make it readable. It just happens that readable means correct in Python's case. It lite…

I just translated all my build scripts written in Python to straight C due to indentation issues. Not because I don't format my code properly, but because any time I refactored my code, I ended up with dozens of subtle indentation related bugs that took hours to find and fix.

If your language requires an IDE, then you have become Java.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#12

Post by cma »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #9
driggs wrote: post #7

Anyone who can't see past Python's indentation-based syntax is a person who doesn't understand Python. (Both literally and figuratively!) When "significant whitespace" is at the top of someone's complaints about Python, I'm immediately done hearing about their superficial criticism of the language.

When I hear someone complain about the whitespace thing, it sends a message to me that they do not format their code well and just go willy-nilly on their indentation. If you're properly indenting code, then it always works as intended . Proper indentation doesn't come from a desire to make the code work, it comes from a desire to make it readable. It just happens that readable means correct in Python's case. It lite…

Not being able to nest multiline lambdas into function arguments where they are called makes you have to read a lot of code backwards.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#13

Post by airstrike »

I used to code in Python for everything in the late aughts and loved meaningful whitespace. Whenever I used a language with braces like JavaScript, for instance, I felt like I was still indenting code meaningfully but now I had the extra hurdle of also caring about the braces. It felt unnecessary and stone-agey.

But back then I was just using vim with a nicely configured .vimrc. Linters weren't really a thing, or at least not neatly integrated into my editing experience.

Nowadays I write Rust in vscode and I love braces. Rustfmt just formats my code every time anyway, so I don't have to care about indentation and braces are placed where they should be. I spend zero time caring about code formatting, outside of configuring rustfmt.toml once per project or the occasional #[rustfmt::skip] for codeblocks which I really want to format in a specific way outside of the linter's configured rules. I also have the benefit of the compiler screaming at me if I forget a brace, pointing to the exact error including telling me when indentation is suggesting a brace is missing! :O

Moreover, I'm much more proficient in vim, and the single hotkey % is reason enough to want to favor braces. Coupled with how often I paste code into Claude, V$%,y has become muscle memory (visually select this whole line, go to the end of the line, then expand the selection to the line matching the closing delimiter under the cursor, then yank everything into the system clipboard with y)...

On occasion, I go back to Python for some side project and the whole experience feels... weird. If braces before LSPs and linters was the stone age, then Python feels like the iron age and I'm living in the future with a compiler that is incredibly talkative and helpful. I'm never going back.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#14

Post by wwfn »

driggs wrote: post #7

Anyone who can't see past Python's indentation-based syntax is a person who doesn't understand Python. (Both literally and figuratively!) When "significant whitespace" is at the top of someone's complaints about Python, I'm immediately done hearing about their superficial criticism of the language.

Literate programming tools that weave/tangle code and documentation don't play well with significant whitespace. Not a problem for me, but I think it's on a valid line of complaints.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#15

Post by gunian »

HexDecOctBin wrote: post #11
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear someone complain about the whitespace thing, it sends a message to me that they do not format their code well and just go willy-nilly on their indentation. If you're properly indenting code, then it always works as intended . Proper indentation doesn't come from a desire to make the code work, it comes from a desire to make it readable. It just happens that readable means correct in Python's case. It lite…

I just translated all my build scripts written in Python to straight C due to indentation issues. Not because I don't format my code properly, but because any time I refactored my code, I ended up with dozens of subtle indentation related bugs that took hours to find and fix. If your language requires an IDE, then you have become Java.

why? black automatically formats code

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#16

Post by kstrauser »

HexDecOctBin wrote: post #11
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear someone complain about the whitespace thing, it sends a message to me that they do not format their code well and just go willy-nilly on their indentation. If you're properly indenting code, then it always works as intended . Proper indentation doesn't come from a desire to make the code work, it comes from a desire to make it readable. It just happens that readable means correct in Python's case. It lite…

I just translated all my build scripts written in Python to straight C due to indentation issues. Not because I don't format my code properly, but because any time I refactored my code, I ended up with dozens of subtle indentation related bugs that took hours to find and fix. If your language requires an IDE, then you have become Java.

Python doesn't require an IDE, but you'll definitely want to use a programmer's editor with it. I don't know what you're using that doesn't handle its indentation correctly because I haven't seen anything like that in at least a decade, but you may wish to upgrade to at least a newer vim or emacs.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#17

Post by kstrauser »

cma wrote: post #12
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear someone complain about the whitespace thing, it sends a message to me that they do not format their code well and just go willy-nilly on their indentation. If you're properly indenting code, then it always works as intended . Proper indentation doesn't come from a desire to make the code work, it comes from a desire to make it readable. It just happens that readable means correct in Python's case. It lite…

Not being able to nest multiline lambdas into function arguments where they are called makes you have to read a lot of code backwards.

I do wish it had lambdas. That's largely mitigated by the fact you can define functions pretty much anywhere. Instead of:

  def my_func():
      another_func(lambda: ...)
you can write

  def my_func():
      def inner(): ...
      another_func(inner)
Sure, it's creating a function, naming it, then immediately throwing it away, but gets the job done with minimal extra boilerplate.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#18

Post by tacticus »

ahartmetz wrote: post #8
driggs wrote: post #7

Anyone who can't see past Python's indentation-based syntax is a person who doesn't understand Python. (Both literally and figuratively!) When "significant whitespace" is at the top of someone's complaints about Python, I'm immediately done hearing about their superficial criticism of the language.

Yeah. It avoids the problem of indentation disagreeing with code structure and reduces visual clutter and... that's it.

you can solve that with a formatter. and then you'd get consistent outputs that work reliably as you move code.

Re: Show HN: Python with do..end in place of strict indentation

#19

Post by kstrauser »

airstrike wrote: post #13

I used to code in Python for everything in the late aughts and loved meaningful whitespace. Whenever I used a language with braces like JavaScript, for instance, I felt like I was still indenting code meaningfully but now I had the extra hurdle of also caring about the braces. It felt unnecessary and stone-agey. But back then I was just using vim with a nicely configured .vimrc. Linters weren't really a thing, or at…

I feel the same way with my editor running Ruff on save. I still have to get the indentation right (which the editor handles for me), but that's about it. Once I hit cmd-s, everything subtly shifts to where it's supposed to be.
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