time to give it another look!
I had a blast doing it in Pluto last year: https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl
I found Julia error messages so unhelpful that eventually I gave up and returned to Python.
In f# I actually really like the significant whitespace.
What realistic scenario is there where it actually makes sense deviating from the standard the language is trying to enforce? And even if you can think of one (I honestly cannot), is now having to write an “end” keyword all over your code really a tradeoff worth making?
Once I needed to incorporate code from a colleague who used 2 spaces for indentation. That was a nightmare.
Both Black or PyCharm's Ctrl+Alt+L format should be able to handle that scenario. You can enable it to run automatically on file save in either (n)vim, VSCode, or PyCharm. Or as a git hook. Or in a CD/CI pipeline.
Seriously, simply installing black through your favourite package manager and running `black .` in your project directory takes like 10 seconds flat. Done, you never have to think about tabs / 2 spaces / 4 spaces ever again.
Please use these tools, I promise both your own and your colleagues' life will be greatly improved, and it takes no effort at all to use.
I do know for sure that my colleague will never use this, even if I might.
Fortunately, this isn't an issue in the languages I use most of the time.
(Another problem that's bothering me almost as much is that without brackets or `end` statements, the code looks assymmetrical - unbalanced and awkward, as if it's trailing off, having forgotten its purpose.)
You literally stated the problem yourself, so obviously not.
Seeing how it’s an official tool by the Python Software Foundation, it should underline how critical it is.
> I do know for sure that my colleague will never use this, even if I might.
You gain value even if you’re the only one using it, as it solves the issue you mentioned having.
The problem wouldn't exist if whitespace wasn't significant, which was an unfortunate design choice. So it's a solution to an unnecessary problem.
in python if you something like this:
while (cond)
if (someothercond)
//code
else
//morecode
somefunction()
//othercode
While in f# the if evaluates to a value, so the type of it would more likely than not change and thus throw out a visible error. Hence me calling out the mixture specifically.
I do think F# is very interesting and quite pretty, though I’ve never used it.