On braces and indentation-based syntax

[shelby3]

@morgen-peschke

I’d imagine that it’d be worse for Scala, as the lack of braces or their inclusion where they could otherwise be omitted in Scala 2 has been used to signal the presence of side effects or communicate that something is a single expression.

If we’re going to be assuming the existence of hypothetical tooling, IntelliJ is fairly good about guessing when you want to add them (though it’s still hilariously wrong at times

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this. So as best as I can ascertain thus far that what you are implying to me that a block can be created in the Scala AST without using braces to delimit it? And there are cases where braces can be use to create something which is not a block in the Scala AST? So the brace has been overloaded in Scala syntax to create multiple things in the AST? And thus yet another example of the irregularity of Scala that makes it such an abstruse language and thus such a small developer pool.

@morgen-peschke

And important point you seem to missing is that, normally, a change that makes development marginally easier for some and near impossible for others would have been rejected. In this case, Martin reversed that, and fewerBraces is just another step in that direction.

I dispute your math. The potential of new junior developers coming from Python to Scala could possible be an order-of-magnitude more than the existing pool of Scala developers. Also you seem to not be that enthusiastic about type classes— ditto @Ichoran. So I am getting this idea that maybe many of the small pool of extant developers aren’t even really that tied to unique Scala features and probably originate from Scala’s OOP legacy which is gradually being deprecated to a unique-selling-point (USP) which Scala has which Kotlin and all the rest don’t have. Type classes are amazing for refactoring code and as a partial solution to Wadler’s Expression Problem especially when combined with the new anonymous unions.

@morgen-peschke

Yes, you may prefer not to have to deal with braces, but treating that preference as an equal concern to the physical inability to read code without them is all sorts of messed up.

Yet you can still code with braced in Scala. And nobody will be forcing you to read my code. If you had only argued for keeping a copy of the official libraries in both braceless and braced I would have been on your side as a reasonable request. If you had argued for faster implementation of multi-colored vertical traces of blocks in the IDE, I would be your ardent supporter. But by now I have figured out that you do not want to be reasonable. You are making your best attempt to entirely obstruct progress and overvalue the gullibility of people who fail to see how out-of-touch with reality your claims of doom and harm are. Your lack of awareness of how your claims play out socially and their actual weight in the real world is almost like your autistic— oh wait you are.

@morgen-peschke

I don’t hate braceless style, [the optional] braceless style disqualifies me from participation in Scala development.

Ftfy. Hyperbole. That is a highly exaggerated claim.