layout rule infelicity

[D. Tweed]

On Thu, 30 May 2002, Ashley Yakeley wrote:

> it). Certainly I find {;} more readable, and I suspect anyone else with a 
> C/C++/Java background (or even a Scheme/Lisp background) does too.</RANT>

Just a data point: I learned Basic, Pascal, Standard ML, C, Haskell, C++,
Perl, Python in that order and actively use Haskell, C++, Perl & Python at
the moment, and I find the `visual noise' of braces and semi-colons in C++
and Perl to be very irritating when, as Lennart points out, to be readable
by me my code has to embody these structures by layout. (It's primarily
the noise of all those `fun', `val' and `end's rather than deeper language
issues that put me off looking at ML again.) Indeed, I (half) there ought
to be a warning on the main page of Haskell.org saying `WARNING: Using
Haskell can lead to semi-colon blindness' since I relatively frequently
spend ten minutes trying to figure out why C++ code isn't compiling only
to realise that, whilst indented structurally the semi-colons are missing
:-S

I suspect using layout rule is forever destined to be controversial...

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