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by acdha 4222 days ago
This is mentioned a lot by Python newcomers but rarely turns out to be a problem in practice because, unlike GNU Make, Python simply requires you to be consistent throughout the same file.

That strikes me as an even more valuable property for configuration, which is more often accessed by multiple people and tools and more often as a distraction from other work rather than the primary focus.
2 comments
josteink 4222 days ago
> Python simply requires you to be consistent throughout the same file.

You or the other team of developers/maintainers/sys-admins looking over or patching this particular file. Using whatever default editor they prefer with whatever config an tabifying/untabifying behaviour that has.

Or maybe they are applying a patch produced on a different system with different tabulation? Or the other 2000 common ways for accuracy to go out the window.

> That strikes me as an even more valuable property for configuration

So you'd like to deliberately make the configuration system more brittle for absolutely no gain?

Yeah. Count me up for anything else. I personally prefer s-expressions, but I would be willing to go the full mile with pretty much any format NOT based on whitespace. Whitespace is bullshit and depending on it even more so.

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acdha 4221 days ago
If your team can't pick a single style and stick with, it is exceedingly unlikely that whitespace will be your biggest source of problems.
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josteink 4221 days ago
So your argument is that because you should be doing $X anyway, let's make the entire OS's configuration system needlessly brittle, just because you're a python dev and like python's style.

I don't think you understand the philosophy behind FreeBSD: it's about creating a predictable and reliable OS. This goes against those goals. Simple as that.

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acdha 4220 days ago
My point is that I've rarely found "predictable and reliable" to hinge on whitespace convention. The Python mention was simply that the same category of complaint comes up frequently in reference to the language but is so rarely an issue in practice that it's not worth discussing.
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emmelaich 4221 days ago
> > Python simply requires you to be consistent throughout the same file.

I like Python but this is not actually true. you only need to be consistent within a block, or be more deeply indented than the outer.

You can have different indentations for the if and else clauses!

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