When I use C, I don't have to worry about subtle type errors cropping up at runtime. Should we all ditch dynamic-typing for Haskell?
and
> invisible characters copied and pasted incorrectly to cause semantic errors
are two different issues. Reformatting doesn't insert (unexpected) invisible characters[1].
As to copy-pasting, this issue already exists in other forms with other languages. How long would it take most people to find the error here:
my $variable = “(＃｀д´)ﾉ”;
C:\Users\Mithaldu>perl -e " my $variable = “(＃｀д´)ﾉ”;"
Unrecognized character \x93; marked by <-- HERE after ariable = <-- HERE near column 18 at -e line 1.That being said, even with the helpful Perl error message, the less experienced developers may have issues trying to determine why Perl doesn't like their double-quote before they figure out what the real issue is.
I guess I should be clear, that I'm not hating on Perl. It's more that I see the "OMG! Semantic whitespace in Python!" argument as a bit of a red herring if that's your only reason for not using the language.