Comment by throwitaway1123
Comment by throwitaway1123 3 days ago
From the blog post you linked: "But the complexity of any proposed solution for this puzzle is immense, to me: it requires the parser (or more precisely, the lexer) to be able to switch back and forth between indent-sensitive and indent-insensitive modes, keeping a stack of previous modes and indentation level."
He's saying exactly what I said: that parsing (or more precisely lexing) makes the problem complex, because Python uses indentation semantically. He then rationalizes avoiding the implementation complexity with a gut feeling: "But none of that takes away my gut feeling".
You see it as a rationalization, while I see it as good sense. After all he also mentioned the "puzzles solvers" who solved the "puzzle", and some would likely have happily provided an implementation if he had given the go-ahead. But he outright refused specifically because "... a user interface can handle only so much complexity or it becomes unusable". You don't need to try putting words in his mouth after he specifically stated that maintaining a simple user interface is higher priority.
And the really ironic thing is that we wouldn't even be having this discussion now if not for this focus, because Python wouldn't have gained such popularity to the point it's also attracting more folk who would destroy what makes it so popular in the first place.