As much grief as Python gets for significant whitespace, I think it really helps the readability. Not only does it enforce what should already be good indenting habits, but it eliminates the noise of braces.
I've always had the opinion that computers should serve the needs of humans, not the other way around.
In languages where white space is insignificant, it is pretty much universal that we use syntactic elements to communicate block structure to the compiler, and white space to communicate block structure to humans. Having two different ways of communicating block structure is: a) redundant and wasteful, and b) a source of bugs.
So, if you buy into the idea that having two different ways of communicating block structure is somewhere between an annoyance and a language design defect, and also buy into the idea that computers should serve the needs of humans, then it follows that the compiler should extract block structure from source the same way that humans do. That being: significant white space.
The {} languages seem very primitive to me any more.
You could argue, using the same logic, that when using {} languages, the computer can serve you by automatically doing the indentation anyway. This is the case in practice: I never have to worry about indenting my code in C, as support for that in most editors is great.
{} languages have the advantage of allowing you an immediate restyling of the code when the original author (who can be of varying skill level) wrote something you don't like looking at, or when you want to change the style of your own code for various reasons.
I find that Python-style blocks generally cause me more mild annoyances than {} blocks.
A frequent thing that happens is copy-pasting/moving a line from some place to another with a different depth: In C, I paste and run my automatic indentation, while in python I have to specify manually by how much I want to indent my new code so that it can know within which block I want it.
... And it's not like you could do so automatically: if I want to paste something after the code of an "if ...:" block, the editor cannot know if I want it inside or outside the block.
On a more abstract level, I personally prefer a language where the end of a block is explicitly specified by the presence of a visible character rather than by the absence of an (arguably) invisible one, and where the form of the code does not affect its function in any way...
I'm not trying to argue that much against the python logic though, because the potential for disastrous style is indeed limited, it has its specific advantages, but I don't think delimiter-based languages can be qualified as more primitive just because of this.
I agree that modern tooling largely erases the tedium of getting indentation right. Whether C++ or Python, selecting a block and hitting either tab or shift-tab fixes indentation. (Which beats the heck out of re-indenting on punch cards, which I'm old enough to have used for CS homeworks...)
And, yes, it is hard to argue that presence of {} makes a language objectively more primitive, which is why I used the word "feel"... the syntactic sugar necessary to keep the block structure straight just looks like noise to me any more. But as with many things, it comes down to personal preferences.
I find that the amount of bugs I tend to get when I copy-paste code far outweighs any potential aesthetic pleasure I get from seeing no begin-end block identifiers. Also, I don't want to let python have credit for not having those block identifiers because python has the colon begin identifier, which is completely redundant.
My code has whitespace that reasonably closely matches Python's rules regardless of the language. I only say "reasonably closely" because I don't spend enough time in Python to really be sure about any potential gotchas.
Indentation is implicit, because you can't see the characters that cause it without turning on whitespace rendering. You only can tell it's there by either moving the cursor around or by observing gaps between characters and other characters or characters and the left margin.
And the end of a block, the lack of indentation that denotes that, is absolutely implicit.
The problem isn't whitespace period, its that if you aren't careful the significant whitespace can bite you, for example people sometimes accidentally mix tabs and spaces, which can get... ugly.
Personally I prefer {} blocks so I don't have to know what sort of white space is creating the indentation, even though I do miss using python sometimes and may come back to it for the right project.
> accidentally mix tabs and spaces, which can get... ugly.
This is trivially solved. You can find and replace with sed[0] if you want to be fancy, or just use your favorite text editor/IDE. The teams I've worked on have never had a problem with this. There is always an established convention in a project, and if you're breaking the convention -- e.g. because you prefer tabs -- you're doing it wrong, just by virtue of breaking the convention. If your project is new and you need to set a convention, do that. (also, PEP8 recommends spaces, so there is an authority to reference as a tie-breaker)
[0]: something like: find ./ -type f -exec sed -i -e 's/ / . /g' {} \;
Furthermore, there is no need for anyone to care what spacing scheme their team uses, after configuring their editor on day 1 with that team. I have Vim convert Python code to tab indentation when opening files, and have it convert to 4-spaces indentation when saving a Python code file. No one should be wasting even a flicker of brain activity over indentation in the 21st century, regardless of how backwards everyone else's preferences are.
While you're at it, please also s/\s+$//g on save. Those unintentional trailing spaces really clutter up Git history, and that comprehensive, clean history is what enables the team leads to do their job without bugging you on Slack. It also signals carelessness, or at least a lack of care for personal tools, and has your name attached to it.
I just tried with three different editors, and literally could not manage to get code in a file indented with a mix of tabs and spaces despite actively attempting to. Who are your co-workers who actually personally have had this happen to them in, say, this decade (not nebulous stories from the internet of "I heard once about this"), and how did they do it?
I know I ran into it at one point, but I haven't slung python in anger in like a decade, so maybe the editors most people are using have started preventing this sort of thing better.
Though I do know in Visual Studio (what I do my day to day coding in these days) I've had situations at work where tabs and spaces got mixed together and at some point it finally started complaining but not right away.
Lack of braces is visually appealing, but I really miss brace hopping in Vi - % to bounce between open and close brace. That also applies to languages with do/end instead of braces.
Good point, I use that feature in C++ quite a bit. But I find that my Python programs tend to use smaller blocks, I don't know if it's just because I'm solving smaller problems or because it's easier to break things down in Python.
I've had mixed feelings about it, but I think one of the better things about it is that it forces less experienced scientist and data analysis programmers to use consistent whitespace.
