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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

I find it annoying that people's only real criticism against Python is the white space. I love that feature, it's like high real estate prices, keeps the rif-raf out.

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Python whitespace is a great shibboleth for screening out people who don't agree with the core philosophy of "one and only one obvious way to do something". You could argue that philosophy is the language's defining feature.

If there's any real barrier to Python adoption, it's the lack of a language-specific fad like Java applets or Rails to push it into a wider audience.

I also don't understand that critic. I have never ever had a problem with it and it is a big part of what makes Python so readable. I don't think there is any other language that comes close to Python in terms of readability.

What is the issue people have with it? They write code that writes code? That is the only issue I can come up with.

And self, yes it might seem a bit unaesthetic at first but it is not such a big deal.

For me, Python = productivity

You can write readable code in any decent language, and you can just as easily write unreadable code in Python. The important variable is the programmer's skill, not some language-imposed restriction. Besides, bad use of white space is rarely what makes code unreadable. It's usually poor organization, functions/modules that are too long, non-descriptive names, overly complex class hierarchies, etc. I think Python is a nice language but I disagree that its whitespace rules make it so much more readable than other languages.

When your working on cross multi-editor / multi-developer projects, you can do your tabs differently, (one might do tabs, another soft tabs, their soft-tabs are 4 spaces, another is 2, another is 8 (ack)) and you get irritating inconsistent tab errors. It can be quite annoying. Having to synchronize on such an irritating detail is even more irritating.

Exactly, in a language where it didn't matter the code would just look like crap over time where as python would force you to face the problem.

Not to mention can't you fix that sort of in consistency in vim or Emacs with a few commands?

So you just decide to use the same?

He says at the bottom of the article that that's not his argument, it's one he hears from others.

I <3 python and its mandatory white space, but requiring self to be listed as a parameter does bug me.

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