Ohnoes significant whitespace (was: Considering migrating to Python from Visual Basic 6 for engineering applications)

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-02-19, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:

> So I am sympathetic to Python newcomers recoiling in horror from
> significant whitespace, *before* they try it. And because of that, we
> are burdened with forever needing to deal with that reaction and
> soothing it.

The first time I wrote Python (it was the only language I could find
that was free and for which I found understandable examples on how to
suck e-mail messages out of Outlook using DCOM -- which was the
problem to be solved), I had an initial aversion to the "significant
whitespace" concept.  That immediately vanished once I started working
on my first Python code.  That was Python 1.5.2 back in 1999.  Shortly
after that, I went to the trouble to add raw socket support to the
Python standard library "socket" module so that I could use Python for
some other tasks. :)

> Those people who claim to have tried Python and *still* complain
> about “significant whitespace”, I have no sympathy for.

I, on the other hand, do feel sorry for them because their brains are
evidently broken in some basic manner that can't help but cause them
suffering.

>  Python clearly does it right, and it's a huge boon to readability
> and reducing simple errors.

Indeed.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Used staples are good
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