umbrella ,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

one of my least favorite things about python is semantic whitespace. no need to comment on yaml.

fuck it, parenthesis all the way.

sajran ,

So I'm going to say what I always say when people complain about semantic whitespace: Your code should be properly indented anyway. If it's not, it's a bad code.

I'm not saying semantic whitespace is superior to brackets or parentheses. It's clearly not. But it's not terrible either.

As someone who codes in Python pretty much everyday for years, I NEVER see indentation errors. I didn't see them back when I started either. Code without indentation is impossible to read for me anyway so it makes zero difference whether the whitespace has semantic meaning or not. It will be there either way.

technom ,

Python decided to use a single convention (semantic whitespace) instead of two separate ones for machine decodeable scoping and manual/visual scoping. That's part of Python's design principle. The program should behave exactly like what people expect it to (without strenuous reasoning exercises).

But some people treat it as the original sin. Not surprised though. I've seen developers and engineers nurture weird irrational hatred towards all sorts of conventions. It's like a phobia.

Similar views about yaml. It may not be the most elegant - it had to be the superset of JSON, after all. But Yaml is a semi-configuration language while JSON is a pure serialization language. Try writing a kubernetes manifest or a compose file in pure JSON without whitespace alignment or comments (which pure JSON doesn't support anyway). Let's see how pleasant you find it.

Crisps ,

This leads to weird bugs when you change indentation and miss a line or reorder lines. The logic changes. Not too bad when you’re on your own, as Python seems to be intended for. Add multiple developers and git merges and it is a recipe for disaster. With end tags at least you just end up with poorly formatted working code.

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Everyone that prefers whitespaces over parentheses is an animal.

LeroyJenkins ,

moo

runeko ,
@runeko@programming.dev avatar

Meow.

lengau ,

Yep! Most of us are even homo sapiens!

masterspace ,

Go home OP, you're drunk.

And give us your keys, you've had too much minimalism to drive.

umbraroze ,

Clearly, the superiour mode is to just use keyword based scoping (à la Ruby do ... end). When I was a kid I read an OBSCENE MAGAZINE where I saw a Forth program go dup dup dup and I was like "ok so what's the problem here? Things happen and everything is just keywords?" and my young mind was corrupted forever I guess

DumbAceDragon ,
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

I don't get why people hate semantic whitespace. The whitespace would be there anyway, and if anything it's easier to read as long as you're not using a dynamically typed abomination like python.

S-expressions are a hack because the Lisp devs didn't know how to make an actual compiler, and instead had the users write the syntax tree for them. (For legal reasons I am being facetious).

In all honesty, I can understand the reason people love s-expressions, but to me they're just unreadable.

Traister101 ,

Semantic whitespace is awful because whitespace (something that you can't actually see) has meaning in how the program runs. Braces { } for scopes gives you the ability to easily tell at a glance where a scope ends. Whitespace doesn't allow for that. Especially, especially when you can accidentally exit a scope (two new lines in a row with Python) and it's not actually an error (Pythons global scope). Yeah formatters and linters make this less of an issue but it sucks... Languages with legible symbols for scoping are significantly easier to reason about, see end symbols in Lua.

isVeryLoud ,
@isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca avatar

I literally can't see whitespace, it gives me headaches looking for it. With brackets, I can get bracket matching in my IDE.

KindaABigDyl ,
@KindaABigDyl@programming.dev avatar 
a = [ Haskell
    , is
    , the
    , GOAT ]
luciole ,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

It’s fascinating how s-expressions are both data type and language syntax. Such power. Only other time I saw something remotely like this was XSLT & XML, which I admittedly do not miss one bit.

RedSeries ,

ITT: Developers who think their code is readable complaining about Python and YAML.

onlinepersona ,

People with bracketed languages just want to write the most unreadable code ever to feel superior.

Anti Commercial-AI license

IronKrill ,

Might just be me but YAML is some of the least readable shit I've ever used.

RedSeries ,

Honestly, I agree. But I don't think Python is anywhere near that bad.

mindbleach ,

Load-bearing whitespace is a mistake.

_NetNomad ,
@_NetNomad@kbin.run avatar

you'll pry my END command from my cold, dead hands...

chonglibloodsport ,

Haskell does both! Most people prefer to use whitespace when writing Haskell but it’s not required. Braces and semicolons are preferred if you’re going to be generating Haskell code.

lorty ,
@lorty@lemmy.ml avatar

No, YAML can fuck right off. I hate that this shit format is used for cloud stuff.

0x0 ,

YAML is the Excel of data formats due to the Norway Problem

RecluseRamble ,

OK, that's excessively "convenient" for booleans. But I don't get the passionate YAML hate, seems like a simple enough language for config. Didn't have the pleasure ("pleasure"?) to work with it though, so what's why else is it shitty?

CaptPretentious ,

Do a search for 'why yaml is bad' and you'll get a lot of stories.

Constant passing problems, especially when the yaml gets very large and complex. After I implemented a new feature I was pulled into a call with 12-15 people demanding to know why it didn't work. The new feature worked fine, The guys yaml had the wrong amount of white space and so it didn't parse.

lorty ,
@lorty@lemmy.ml avatar

White space in the wrong place? Fails
Wrong amount of tabs? Fail

Working in a big configuration file that has a lot of nesting? Good luck.

Best part is that most of these things don't throw errors or anything, it just doesn't work and you are left scratching your head as to why your deploy only fails in the production environment.

magic_lobster_party ,

A property can have the wrong indentation and it would still be a syntactically correct yaml. It’s hard to distinguish whether a line is wrongly indented or not. Copy and paste a line and mistakenly use the wrong indentation, and the entire production breaks.

In json it’s much harder to do similar mistakes.

UnfortunateShort ,

I think TOML found a pleasant compromise there

AdamBomb ,

Since it’s a superset of JSON, couldn’t you just use the JSON notation if you hate the semantic whitespace?

flappy ,

I hate YAML so much

aniki , 
I love python:
     Fight me IRL.
Tamkish ,

fine i will take the bait: thats 5 spaces

Barbarian ,
@Barbarian@sh.itjust.works avatar

As long as the next line also has 5 spaces, that's fine. Python only complains about inconsistency, not the exact number of spaces/tabs.

Buddahriffic ,

Make, on the other hand... Ugh.

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