[ajuc]

> I thought that by now it was universally accepted that having clear rules is a good idea, see Python and golang)

It is far from being generaly accepted, see Clojure, Scala, Rust, Ruby, ... I'd say more new languages don't follow this than do. And despite general love for Python its most controversial feature is exactly this.

[kibwen]

Rust has had formatting rules in the vein of PEP 8 for years now, and I'm hoping that an automatic rustfmt will emerge sometime between tomorrow's alpha release and the stable release a few months from now.

[steveklabnik]

Yes, we absolutely want a rustfmt. There's just been higher-priority work to do, and some conventions are still settling out. Gotta know what to format to before you can build a formatter!

[mhd]

And the introduction of mandatory fixed formatting for go (in the name of making semicolons optional) wasn't without some opponents either, if I remember correctly, even in that rather obedient fandom.

[baldfat]

After moving from Python and its "clear rules" of having one and only one obvious way of doing things to programming in R.

I like R and the flexibility of have many different ways of doing anything. What you lose you gain with quick evolving libraries and work flows. R is light years past where it was just five years ago and Python is still stuck at trying to go from 2.7 to 3.4. R has gone from R 1983 to a fast adapting language due to the flexibility of how you can do something.

[_pmf_]

> It is far from being generaly accepted, see Clojure, Scala, Rust, Ruby, ... I'd say more new languages don't follow this than do. And despite general love for Python its most controversial feature is exactly this.

Maybe, but the question is whether they are better off or worse off for it.

[kbenson]

No, actually the question was whether it's universally accepted as a good idea. Obviously it isn't (universally accepted). No need to turn this into a discussion of the merits, that's been done here many, many times before.

[Profpatsch]

lel, of course everyone is going to discuss about the smallest critique I stated. Bikeshedding at its best.

[ribs]

You did lead with that one.

[ajuc]

I'm happy with either python-like, lisp-like or c-like syntax, just ban tabs if you use python syntax please.

[kmicklas]

Regardless of the relative merits of tabs vs spaces, tabs make the most sense _specifically in a Python-like language_.

[ajuc]

I don't care about tabs vs spaces, I just don't want to have the "inconsistent identation" problem, and spaces are more fundamental (you can convert arbitrary tabs to spaces, you can't convert arbitrary spaces to tabs).

Also you cannot forbid spaces in code, but you can easily forbid tabs.

[steveklabnik]

Ruby effectively has a standard format, the only significant diverging style is Seattle Style. It's true that there might be some edge cases, but the vast, vast majority of Ruby code looks the same.

[vorg]

Ruby has different styles named after cities, does it? A standard (Tokyo ?) style and a Seattle style? Perhaps we should add the London style, named after Groovy because Groovy's essentially a carbon clone of Ruby except for syntax.

[steveklabnik]

Just Seattle. Members of Seattle.rb do a lot of Ruby infrastructure work, and were around before Ruby really blew up in the states.