On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 12:41 AM, George Huber
(1) what was the driving force behind using white-space to denote code blocks? From a beginners perspective (especially coming from a strong C / C++ background) this seems to add to the learning curve for the language, and can add a good deal of frustration.
I only really know two languages that use significant whitespace in this way, Python and Haskell. I learnt Python first, and had basically the same thoughts as you do. It felt weird, even though I always made sure to indent my C/C++ code to make it more readable. It took some time, but by now I love it, and consider it a positive point of both languages. IMO the people behind Haskell had a better understanding of the off-side rule though, so there are less strangeness in Haskell indentation. By now I find that my indentation practices are leaking into other languages, e.g. from a distance my OCaml code looks similar to my Haskell code. You may be right that it adds to the learning curve, but I consider it well worth it in the long run. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．org http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe