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You missed my point. I am talking about the code being cleaner to look at in general.

It's just a trade-off. You get cleaner-looking code, which is much trickier to copy off a random web page. The latter might seem trivial, but it's not so simple. In an environment with ubiquitous browsers, many programmers start as copy-pasters. (Just as many of us of earlier generations started out in BASIC.)

I'm not saying this is bad. It just is.

If you're trying to copy a non-trivial amount of code from a web page, you're doing it wrong. In 2010, I think sharing code over the internet is a solved problem.

Newbies often try to "do it wrong." I also wrote lots of really horrendous BASIC. It was a learning experience. If you think of tab-soup as a Python newbie right of passage, that's your prerogative.

The programmers should hone their tools first, as they are going to be the most important part of their experience. For copy-pasting code, in vim -- surely other editors have similar, highlight the new code (and surrounding code) and hit "=" (equals) key.

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