"Indentation significant syntax"
:(
in my opinion, one of the worst ideas to plague many new languages
brackets are really, seriously, honestly a better visual cue for grouping
:(
in my opinion, one of the worst ideas to plague many new languages
brackets are really, seriously, honestly a better visual cue for grouping
For example, what's the editing experience like compared to e.g. OCaml with emacs/Merlin? Is there anyone in a position to compare 1ML's approach to unifying type/value languages vs using dependent types?
Personally, I find 1ML's approach more pragmatic, or, at least, easier to digest for most programmers - including Haskell programmers. Dependent types are more powerful, but they aren't free from complications. For instance, unifying the type and value languages willy-nilly can cause trouble if you want your value language to be Turing-complete, because now type-level computation can diverge too! In a language based on System F-omega, type-level computation is guaranteed not to diverge, because its type level is the simply typed lambda calculus. Some use cases might warrant providing more powerful type-level computation facilities (e.g. calculating the shapes of multidimensional matrices), but it isn't clear to me that the full power of a Martin-Loef-style dependent type theory is needed.
These are functional languages, and there isn't a lot of code to chunk together with brackets. Functions are often just one line, and it's a bit cumbersome to make functions that require multiple lines. Do you believe brackets add to the readability of a one line function?
int func()
{
while dosomething()
{
dosomething()
dosomething()
doanotherthing()
}
dosomething()
}
def func():
while dosomething():
dosomething()
dosomething()
doanotherthing()
dosomething()A machine can look at the braces and re-indent the code, so that you don't have to look at the braces. All while you rest assured that the meaning didn't change:
I just popped it into Vim, selected all and hit =:
int func()
{
while dosomething()
{
dosomething()
dosomething()
doanotherthing()
}
dosomething()
}
The only thing I miss about braces is being able to jump to the end of a block easily. In python and similar that's a bit harder to do with an editor.
Having explicit delimiters (I don't care if it's {}, begin...end, or whatever) provide several benefits that I have often used.
1. (by far the most important) They trivialize the recovery of indentation that has been trashed by a bad/misconfigured/unfamiliar editor or coworker who inserted "\t" characters into the file. Just run indent-region or send the file through indent(1).
2. Moving code is easier. Just kill/yank it to where you want it and let indent-region or whatever re-indent as needed. Without delimiters I have to either re-indent manually or use an editor with a feature that changes a region's indent level. Even with such a feature, I still have to tell the editor "move this two levels deeper". With delimiters, I can leave that work to the editor.
3. The movement advantages you mentioned.
As for the extra work of having to close blocks (including the infamous LISP ")))))" motif), that's what features like electric-pair-mode is for.
Even better, delimiters can convey more information. Color cues have proven to be very effective at conveying important information; syntax highlighting is very popular, even when showing code outside an editor (such as inside a <pre> tag). I find extending these color cues to also show nesting[1] to be almost as useful as basic syntax highlighting. (I'm using rainbow-delimiters[2] in that screenshot).
Meaning that without the braces the code itself would be wrong, in C. Not that C itself is wrong.
That's also true if the intent is ambiguous (the braces say one thing and the indentation something else).
Hey, remove the braces and the intent is clear now!
Vect n a -> Vect m a -> Vect (n + m) a
A big positive of using indentation is that it enforces a visual indication of scope vs. languages where culturally it is normal to find code with lots of giant one-liners and braces on one line.
But overall, you just get used to it and don't notice it. Everyone who yells about languages that use indentation is bikeshedding in the worst way.
There is no objective best answer here. I vastly prefer indentation based grouping, but I respect that you don't.