Path: csiph.com!feeder.erje.net!2.us.feeder.erje.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!panix!not-for-mail From: Grant Edwards Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: Ohnoes significant whitespace (was: Considering migrating to Python from Visual Basic 6 for engineering applications) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:57:48 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 33 Message-ID: References: <90cc50d2-1ce5-4588-9bfd-a49d439f00dd@googlegroups.com> <14c75a68-0d2e-45cc-8d73-0d71b6a6aea6@googlegroups.com> <56c66225$0$1607$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 67-130-15-94.dia.static.qwest.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1455893868 23760 67.130.15.94 (19 Feb 2016 14:57:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:57:48 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/1.0.2 (Linux) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:103196 On 2016-02-19, Ben Finney wrote: > So I am sympathetic to Python newcomers recoiling in horror from > significant whitespace, *before* they try it. And because of that, we > are burdened with forever needing to deal with that reaction and > soothing it. The first time I wrote Python (it was the only language I could find that was free and for which I found understandable examples on how to suck e-mail messages out of Outlook using DCOM -- which was the problem to be solved), I had an initial aversion to the "significant whitespace" concept. That immediately vanished once I started working on my first Python code. That was Python 1.5.2 back in 1999. Shortly after that, I went to the trouble to add raw socket support to the Python standard library "socket" module so that I could use Python for some other tasks. :) > Those people who claim to have tried Python and *still* complain > about “significant whitespace”, I have no sympathy for. I, on the other hand, do feel sorry for them because their brains are evidently broken in some basic manner that can't help but cause them suffering. > Python clearly does it right, and it's a huge boon to readability > and reducing simple errors. Indeed. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Used staples are good at with SOY SAUCE! gmail.com