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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

the difference is that if you're not careful when you cut-paste indented blocks in python, you can easily change logic.

If you cut and paste probably the misaligned indentation is the least problem. Cut and paste should be avoided if it's not done during a refactoring (so actual moving of code for better design).

Beginners usually think Python strong indentation is a weakness of the language. I actually find C++ freedom being more error prone:

    if (a < b);
        a = b

It's a not very frequent bug, but when it happens it takes you hours to spot. ;)

Yes and in Go (and hopefully all curly-brace languages of the future) this is actually a syntax error, you need the braces:

  if (a < b) {
     a = b;
  }

And you don't need the semicolons!

The thing I don't get...if braces are mandatory (Good), why keep the now completely, unambiguously, irrelevant () around the cond?

They're actually not required in Go.

You don't need those parens in Go, and go fmt will in fact remove them/

If you ran the code through gofmt, it would remove the () around the cond for you. I code go in SublimeText with GoSublime. On every save it runs the file through gofmt and reformats it for me. Keeps my code looking pretty with very little effort.

This would never happen to me because I frequently format my doc, and it wouldn't be indented.

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