Considering migrating to Python from Visual Basic 6 for engineering applications

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 11:30 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 10:32 pm, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> The biggest disadvantage of Python is that, in a number of ways, it
>> surprises people. Significant whitespace bugs a lot of experienced
>> programmers
>
> This is why we cannot have nice things.
>
> "But what if we pass the source code through a system that strips out
> leading whitespace?"
>
> "Then don't do that. What if you pass the source code through a system that
> strips out braces?"

You may note that I didn't say that this was a flaw in Python. And
it's not a tooling issue either (that was mentioned as a parenthesis,
but wasn't my main point). I'm talking about how people, those bags of
flesh and thoughts, are bugged out by the notion that *whitespace*
should matter (other than the mere presence/absence of it). It's the
price you pay for being different - people will have trouble
comprehending you.

ChrisA