Python indentation deters newbies?

[George Kinney]

<beliavsky at aol.com> wrote in message
news:3064b51d.0408130615.3fc4a760 at posting.google.com...
> I'm not saying that Python's use of indentation is bad, just that it
> stops many programmers from trying it.

I thought it was a bit odd years ago when I first saw it, but then I spent
years writing code in ILE RPG. Which is a language where
actual line position of opcodes/values, etc matters. Which is quite a bit
more extreme than python's indented blocks. (Of course python
has now been ported to OS/400, or i5/OS as its called this month, so I can
use either. :) )

IBM did decide to produce a free-format version of RPG,  which tosses the
learned readability of veterans in the trash in the hopes of attracting some
of these 'required-format-is-scary' programmers to the fold. Like this, and
not the fact that the OS/400 platform is fairly obscure to most programmers,
is the root cause of RPG programmers being hard to find.

Personally, if the first comment out of a new hire's mouth was a gripe about
how to format source code, I show them the door. If, a few months later,
they gripe about the format because it causes a real, measurable problem,
then I'll buy them a beer. :)