horizontal scrollitis? (was Re: Larry Wall's comment on python...)

[Peter Hansen]

mmaddox at hcsmail.com wrote:
> You're right. The PLACEMENT of blocks in my style is arbitrary. My
> intention was to indicate the STYLE of block delimiting was arbitrary

Probably also not true.  I believe many of the choices made for Python
in its early stages were made after both experience *and*
experimentation with alternatives.  Not sure about the block delimiters
(or invisibility thereof) themselves, but certainly things like the
use of the colon before a block were made because of studies suggesting
they were a Good Thing.

> Now, I LOVE Python. I also love C++. Smalltalk and Lisp are interesting.
> Perl is useful to someone somewhere. I said some things that are not as
> precise as I would have liked, and I don't want to explore the semantics
> of this mailing list and each individual post.	Python is cool. Let's talk
> about Python.

My post talked exclusively about Python, so I agree with that idea. :)
Maybe you would still respond to the other Python-related question
I asked:

 >>I definitely don't understand how Python, more or less than any other
 >>language, leads to more horizontal scrolling.  Pretty much all
 >>Python code I've ever seen (though I haven't seen yours yet :-) is
 >>roughly 80 characters max, and mine own has been about that since I
 >>started writing C code 16 years ago.
 >>
 >>Do you mean there is something special about Python not delimiting
 >>blocks in the traditional ways which somehow leads you to write
 >>much wider lines of code?

-Peter