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by szmarczak 87 days ago
> whitespace/indent languages make it clear there's a lot of redundancy there too.

The only purpose for whitespace indentation is to make the code easier on the eyes. A space shouldn't have an impact in terms of execution, that would be too hazardous. It's too easy to randomly insert a space rather than a character.
1 comments
xigoi 86 days ago
> It's too easy to randomly insert a space rather than a character.

What are you doing with your code? I never find myself just randomly inserting characters.

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szmarczak 86 days ago
> I never find myself just randomly inserting characters.

Hasn't it ever occured to you trying to insert a space at your mouse but your cursor wasn't there? People sometimes forget to click (or think the cursor is already there), myself included. Characters are easier to spot because they are not invisible and random letters cause compile errors.

If it has never occurred to you, then good for you. However I do not see what the benefit of not using closing brackets would be.

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xigoi 86 days ago
I don’t use the mouse when editing code, so this particular mistake does not happen to me.

> I do not see what the benefit of not using closing brackets would be.

Less visual noise. And the ability to use braces for other syntax.

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szmarczak 85 days ago
> I don’t use the mouse when editing code, so this particular mistake does not happen to me.

Fair point.

> Less visual noise.

It doesn't solve this problem of your eyes guessing the correct indentation, especially when using two spaces (I hate two spaces even with braces). You could set up your IDE so it highlights the block and prints a hint at the end what block is ending, however you lose this once you open a plain text editor.

The point of using braces for this is that you can count them.

Also, if you were to print the code without braces on a paper, it would be a hard time reading, since the paper is much smaller than a 27" monitor.

> And the ability to use braces for other syntax.

There's other ways. For example, {} in Swift can be also used for ResultBuilder. And if you need the braces without knowing the type upfront, you can prefix it e.g. ${}.

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