• 3abas@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Because yaml is not a programming language, and debugging why your whatever you’re configuring isn’t working correctly can be a nightmare. It doesn’t tell you you missed an indent on a block, it just assumes it should be there and changes the meaning.

      Braces are visually clear.

      • softwarist
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        1 month ago

        I think YAML has its fair share of design flaws, but I don’t think significant indentation is one of them. It may not be a programming language (which may be debatable), but there are plenty that use syntactic whitespace.

        • 3abas@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It’s not debatable… You linked to a programming language that uses yaml syntax, that didn’t make yaml itself a programming language… It’s not.

          And I know there are plenty that use syntactic whitespace, and I hate that about all of them. Literally my only real frustration with python is due to the time of my life wasted debugging perfectly fine logic that fails because a few lines had incorrect indentation.

    • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Because I am not counting white space when I read. Or should we just write machine code/assembler/pick something straight away?

      • softwarist
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        1 month ago

        Not sure I’m following the jump from significant whitespace to machine code. How are those related?

        • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Human and machine read differently. If you ignore that (in case with indentation), then why bother with writing human-friendly form of code, when what is going to be really executed is something else?

          • softwarist
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            1 month ago

            If anything, that sounds like an argument in favor of significant indentation, not against it. Humans and machines read differently, yes, which is why we tend to add whitespace and indentation to code even for programming languages where it’s not significant. We do that expressly because it makes the code more human-friendly, so it’s quite the opposite of ignoring their differences.

            • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              No, it is an argument against it. We indent code so that it is more comfortable to read it, not in order to make it easier to understand

              • softwarist
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                1 month ago

                You’re mistaken:

                Indentation is a secondary notation that is often intended to lower cognitive load for a programmer to understand the structure of the code.

                • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  Lol. Go on, show me how it is easier to understand structure of the code when I am 3 levels down, first two are already out of sight

                  • softwarist
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                    1 month ago

                    That’s not a coherent argument, but you don’t have to agree with me. I think this discussion has run its course.