For example, semantic whitespace is arguably implicit, hard to read, invites density (compared to an extra line for braces), and (again arguably) is ugly.
Yes, some of these things are subjective, but it's hard for me to confidently recommend Python to someone with these values.
Because logic in python is interpreted via indentation, it's very difficult for python to realize when a line is indented incorrectly. It just assumes that if a line is indented a certain way, it was intentional.
In programming languages like Ruby or Javascript, indentation is stylistic and has no effect on the logic. You can actually use the "auto-indent" feature of many editors, and you can use linting tools to ensure formatting. If you have an extra "end" or an extra ending bracket, your IDE can immediately warn you. Not so with python!
How is this different from some language not realising that a statement should be inside of the curly brackets instead of outside?
It's like static type checking: The class of errors the compiler can catch is larger when it's present. Likewise, with visible scoping characters, the class of errors the compiler can catch is larger than when they are invisible.
Yes, but can it determine scope if things are poorly-bracketed? Because that's the fair comparison.
That's not true of indent mistakes. Semantic whitespace is lossy -- there's data contained in those brackets that some people think is low-value that it's expendable for the sake of saving keystrokes, but it does have value in practice.
Flat is better than nested
every time this discussion comes up, it's clear that people simply aren't willing to accept that this is a solvable problem, despite the many people who always come out of the woodwork to insist that we've solved it. Is it really that hard to accept that someone out there may have solved something you haven't?
That said, everything is a trade-off. Semantic whitespace has downsides, but if the upsides outweigh, then it's a great idea.
At this point, I have no idea what the upsides are, other than saving a few keystrokes (which truly is solvable with a good editor).
It's like removing the ending semicolon in JavaScript. Sure, it almost never causes a problem, but sometimes it does, so why do it?
If you are using notepad as an editor then maybe this could be an issue?
Every other editor I've used validates the syntax and quickly catches misaligned statements. Auto formatting works too.
How is it implicit and hard to read? If anything it's very explicit, instead of just a single { and } to denote "the next part is the body", it explicitly requires visibly indenting the body.
That's easier to read, and is the expected "good practice" in C and similar "brace" languages anyway (you're not supposed to use { and } without also indenting your code there either).
Python's semantic whitespace is more visible than having a { and } in C e.g. and not indenting, or having a for/if/etc without braces with a single statement attached and not indenting.
Not sure what's ugly about:
def double(n):
return n*2
function double(int n) {
return n*2;
}
function double(int n) {return n*2;}
Whitespaces forces programmer to make code readable. Obviously today with tools like gofmt, rustfmt it seems easy and those are inspired by Python.
Python PEP process has been adopted by many programming language. Try JCP process and see what I am talking about.
Indeed so much so that python style is adopted by swift language and it does look cleaner than others.
Obviously I like concise perl, Haskell code too they have a beauty of their own, but that does not make python whitespace is bad.
It's just people who feel it's a burden to explicitly follow whitespace hate python indentation based on my observations. Since suddenly instead of braces or statement end one need to use a visual sense of beauty along with logic.