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0 pointsuwuemu3y ago0 comments

Not that OP's problem is curly braces per se (they would make the error more obvious, but they wouldn't help with a missing return call), but since we're taling about them...

The insistence of a lot of smart people on using whitespace for logic purposes is THE most baffling thing in the IT space. And I mean that.

Why use some, oh I dont know, CHARACTER, to write down what you mean, why not instead use a NON CHARACTER. Now that's a great idea!

Let's use non characters, so a mix of tabs and spaces (which editors can implement AND display in a number of different ways, even depending on individual configuration!) fucks up shit. Using whitespace is also great because copy/paste is now an error-prone exercise in frustration, which is definitely what we want! Oh and also this will make sure that the peasants are not using our beautiful language IN NAUGHTY WAYS, e.g. you can't really write a deeply nested logic in a single function if it becomes a complete abomination of a mess just after like two or three indentations.

No, but seriously, Python's syntax in regards to whitespace, or any language that uses whitespace for control structures, is hot garbage. I understand that there are preferences, coding standard, etc. and I can tolerate a lot, but this, this is the one hill I'm willing to die on.

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haspok3y ago

The insistence of a lot of smart (?) people on NOT using whitespace for logic purposes is THE most baffling thing in the IT space. And I mean that.

If you look at your typical C-like code, it is already whitespace-oriented, you just manually add the braces as line noise, to make it easier to write a compiler for the language (although even that may not be true). It is like using one character variable names, which - other than the trivial places - makes your code harder to read.

If you want to write deeply nested logic in a function: well, don't. But if you insist, I'm not sure how curly braces help you in this case.

uwuemuOP3y ago

You see I've seen this "argument" a million times and it's always the same: braces are somehow visual noise. And that's it. No more arguments, it's just this one. And it's a very weak one, one that is largely about preferences. On the other hand, I listed 3 examples of indentations actually being in the way of the programmer, ESPECIALLY when working with other people. (Another example: Indentations are notorious for not surviving basic text communications between people, imagine sending Python code over email or god forbid something like Skype. Good luck reconstructing the code on the other side. Because indentations have logic attached to them, you can't just copypaste and let your editor take care of the formatting - like you can in ANY OTHER NORMAL C-LIKE LANGUAGE.)