A bit of programing language snark from the Ruby-lang list:
I think we can learn a lot from programming languages and Python. First off, we should be writing in a fixed space font so we can take visual cues from spacing more easily. Next, why do we need periods at the end of a sentence when we know that two spaces after a word mean that the previous sentence just ended Doesn't that make sense And do we really need caps at the beginning of a sentence we know all sentences are capitalized and we have just defined that two spaces before a word means that it is at the beginning of a sentence next we should look at spelling double consonants don't realy add to the meaning so begining now we spel words by droping repeated consonants just look at al these great benefits we can learn from python self.we self.just self.need self.to self.learn self.to self.ignore self.certain self.aspects self.that self.may self.cary self.over
Don’t worry, the Ruby community is normally not nearly this snarky. Personally, I’ve always felt that the whole significant whitespace issue in Python was a red herring; I never understood why people got so hung up about it one way or another, especially when Python has so many glaring architectural and implementation faults which would seem to be far more important.
I don’t really care, myself. I don’t understand why Python fans find the Python scheme so much better, and I don’t see why the Python detractors have such a problem with it. To me, code with and without begin/end blocks or braces is equally readable. The only nitpick I have about Python’s significant whitespace is that it’s fragile. Ever see a chunk of code on a mailing list after it’s been batted around a few times? After going through a few different mail clients it has usually lost any consistent indentation it might once have had. And in Python there is no way to reliably reconstruct the missing whitespace once it has been lost. Whereas not only will C, Java, or [most] Ruby still compile after it’s been folded, spindled, and mutilated; but with a good editor you can restore it to pristine, readable indentation with a few keystrokes.