Hacker News Reader

> Using this as an example, are there more modern equivalent tools that may be a bit more user friendly? I appreciate make and I get its age and the complexity and all, it's just sometimes I need something that's simple and explicit, without the historic baggage.

Indenting with tabs too complicated? Let me introduce you to YAML.

View on HN

> Indenting with tabs too complicated?

I meant "Otherwise Make will crash with a cryptic error" and used that as a single example.

I've found the "make tabs are confusing" crowd heavily overlaps the "python is more readable than perl" crowd.

I find the cognitive dissonance amusing.

Both views come from the same place: the idea that the semantic scoping should match the visual scoping, rather than counting tabs for indentation but not counting visually indistinguishable spaces (make) or ignoring your indentation entirely in favour of what the braces said (perl).

YAML prohibits tabs outright. That sounds a lot simpler to me, since there's no need to be aware of the difference between a tab and the equivalent number of spaces when the former is not a possibility at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com