do people really complain about significant whitespace?

[Carl Banks]

Michiel Sikma wrote:
> Op 8-aug-2006, om 1:49 heeft Ben Finney het volgende geschreven:
>
> > As others have pointed out, these people really do exist, and they
> > each believe their preconception -- that significant whitespace is
> > intrinsically wrong -- is valid, and automatically makes Python a
> > lesser language.
>
> Well, I most certainly disagree with that, of course, but you gotta
> admit that there's something really charming about running an auto-
> formatting script on a large piece of C code, turning it from an
> unreadable mess into a beautifully indented and organized document.

The only time I get that satisfaction is when I run the formatter to
format some C code I'm asked to debug.  Quite often the problem was
something that could have been easily spotted if the coder had used
good indentation in the first place.  Though they probably wouldn't
have seen it anyways, considering the poor programming skills of most
engineers (the classical definition, not computer engineers).

The very fact the code formatters exist should tell you that grouping
by indentation is superior.


Carl Banks