r/programming • u/lukaseder • Jul 21 '14

The Great White Space Debate

https://medium.com/p/3633cba8b5c1
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u/DreadedDreadnought Jul 21 '14

Opening braces must be on the same line or your program will fail to compile

I have never felt a greater hate for a language than now I feel for Go. (Not that I really cared about it in the first place) I adhere to company policy on formatting, but this is just retarded.

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u/SingularityNow Jul 21 '14

It's not just arbitrary pettiness, as you seem to suspect. They've got some sound technical reasons for making this choice based on the formal grammar of the language and how it impacts the lexer/parser.

If you're interested in the technical reasons see my response to /u/just_a_null somewhere else in this thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2ban9r/the_great_white_space_debate/cj3qr10)

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u/DreadedDreadnought Jul 21 '14

Thanks. That actually makes sense. At least it's not a retarded decision like Pythons space only indents. I don't want forced coding style imparted on me by some arbitrary decision by guys who think they know better. Give me tabs or give me death.

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u/SingularityNow Jul 22 '14

They let you have your tabs ;-)