undefined | Better HN

0 pointsBubRoss6y ago0 comments

There is no "taking a stance". There are two line endings being talked about here, with carriage returns and without. Why are you so desperate to change the goal posts? This change log is hundreds of lines long, you think ignoring carriage returns is a big deal?

Why would it matter for tools? Have the tools run zigfmt. Why make users build a script to compile a hello world program? Does zig only allow a single space between tokens?

Again you are trying anything you can think of to justify a ridiculous choice because you want to defend zig as a whole. Nothing ads up here.

> there is no reason to care which whitespace character the formatter outputs for you.

I never said anything about that. I have only talked about the compiler erroring out on carriage returns as an intentional design choice.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

zamadatix6y ago· 2 in thread

There is stance to take you just disagree with the choice. I think at this point you understand the initial aims and reasons of why Zig chose the syntax it did so here's a question about your stance both line endings should be supported by the compiler: why is it more important than the reasons Zig gave? Sure everything can be made to support variations in line endings but why? It's not that a formatter is hard to come by, it ships with the build tools. It's not that it's hard to initialize, it ships with the build tools. It's not that editors don't support the line ending, even Notepad does. It's not that existing tools that look for multiple types of line endings don't work, they still see the \n as is. Is it literally just because if you go to write your first hello world on some machines you get a syntax error telling you what needs to be changed for it to be a valid Zig source file or are there other reasons?

It's not like there is an enormously "wow this would change everything about using the language" _either way_ (which is part of why it's so confusing it's the hill you're willing to die on about using Zig) it's literally "there was an option for simplifying syntax and parsing at the cost of making \r\n a syntax error". You may not agree with it but there were reasons and a path was taken. It's not the Twilight Zone, ridiculous, nonsense, user hostile, or to screw with Windows users it's a minor choice you don't agree with in a project with millions of choices to make.

BubRossOP6y ago

You can say it's just a "disagreement" but there are no benefits to doing this. No one has actually out forward reasoning that makes sense. You have just thrown out flimsy arguments and then moved on to more flimsy arguments when I point out how absurd they are.

This is a typical thing people do when they can't directly confront something. They throw out as much as they can and don't acknowledge when what they said was shot down, they just throw out more and hope something sticks.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

You said so much and none of it made sense, but instead of backing up claims of "parsing being easier" or "can't support multiple line endings" or any other nonsense, you just make be on to more nonsense. Literally no other compiler intentionally breaks by default. There is no reasonable reason to do this and you haven't even come close to mentioning one and infact have had to go into bizarre concoctions because you don't want to admit how silly this is.

zamadatix6y ago

I've presented the cases for why it was done, whether you agree with the cases or not does not cause their existence to cease they are still the reasons Zig made the decision. Also whether or not you think it was the right decision overall it does make parsing easier. You may argue in the singular case it is only trivially easier but looking for \n is still unarguably easier than looking for \r\n OR \n (or any other line endings some languages accept). This is all ignoring the overall picture of having the fewest ways to do something as possible which is a whole ideological debate I don't think would go anywhere.

I then asked for clarification on why Zig shouldn't have made the decision:

"I think at this point you understand the initial aims and reasons of why Zig chose the syntax it did so here's a question about your stance both line endings should be supported by the compiler: why is it more important than the reasons Zig gave?"

and:

"Is it literally just because if you go to write your first hello world on some machines you get a syntax error telling you what needs to be changed for it to be a valid Zig source file or are there other reasons?"

And instead of responding you said more about how I've only said nonsense and unable to directly confront something.

"There is no reason to do this" is not an argument why it should be done one way or the other. "No other compiler intentionally breaks [on line endings] by default" is not a reason either but I think it relates to the only argument I identified: "if you go to write your first hello world on some machines you get a syntax error telling you what needs to be changed for it to be a valid Zig source file". I'd also love to say how silly this all is and that there is some solid reason to use tabs and Windows line endings (remember I'm a Windows user who uses the tab key) but in using Zig I have not found any reasons myself.

So on that note, again I'll ask: is there anything else this choice on line endings breaks? That is to say: not that you think it's nonsense, not that you haven't seen it before, not "well you haven't convinced me it should be this way". I'm genuinely asking about why you think it shouldn't in practice - is your only reason for caring about this because when you wrote hello world it told you the line ending needed to be \n or does it actually break some tool or workflow or limit functionality down the line or not have support somewhere or something else I haven't thought of?

If it's just the latter I think we're about as far as we can get and maybe that's why you feel there isn't any direct confrontation - you think that mildly rare error is more important than the mildly simpler syntax definition, not the end of the world for either side so be it at least we all understand the whys and why nots that led to it. I have a feeling though, considering you've been here all this time and listed it as the reason you refuse to use the language, that perhaps there are other reasons this was the wrong decision I'm still missing?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse