this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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FORTRAN isn't a beauty either.
And Python is strange as hell with its mandatory tabs.
You can use spaces in Python.
Two, three or four spaces? If you answer wrong I'll never forgive you
Depends on the mood.
No one will ever know. That is my editor's job. XD
Whatever your place defines as a standard. I’ve seen ugly code in C, JavaScript, Java, etc., that uses them all over the place because they’re not mandatory.
If you don’t have consistent indenting, your code looks like copy/paste from several sources; but if you do have consistent indenting, then the indenting of Python is a non-issue.
Per the Linux kernel coding style:
I’m rather partial to five myself but only when I’m feeling fancy.
Yes
Indentation-driven control flow is one of the most cursed things ever invented, excluding things explicitly designed to inflict pain or death.
Haskell has the choice of both indentation based and brackets for things like
doblocks, but most people use indentation based cause it's the norm and looks cleanerWhite space sensitive languages are evil.
List comprehensions are much stranger than tabs vs spaces. There are very very very few languages that use them, and python’s is by far the worst out of the popular ones.
Skill issue. Once you learn them they are quite fun.
I'm not saying I don't understand them. I'm saying the syntax is terrible. Compare it to Ruby (or any other modern language) and it's abundantly clear.
python (uses syntax not available in any other top 25 language)
ruby (normal chain syntax with
map)even kotlin is more readable, even though you have to convert to a double and back kotlin
For nested cases it's even more apparent:
python
ruby
kotlin
just from a base level, you have to read the middle of the comprehension first, then the end, then the beginning. It's a completely backwards way to write and read code. unlike other languages that use a 'functional' approach, where it's chained methods or pipes, etc. Even Elixir, which does have list comprehensions, reads and writes in the proper order:
elixir
The concept of a list comprehenshion is sinple but syntax is awful, as if Yoda was writing a for loop. "x for x in y it is, hmm yes".
Wasn't the python convention to use spaces (4 iirc)? Which is just plain wrong imho.
most repos use 4 spaces
This is the one thing I hate about python, because the spacing would differ between editors. I used vim to create the files on one system, and geany to edit them on another. Via uses 8 spaces in a tab (at least for me), while geany uses 4. This makes python mad, and drives me crazy.
Also, the rules for whitespace separation between things like loops, methods, and the rest of the code is annoying/ wierd (at least to me).
You know that editors let you change their defaults, right?
and that indentation defaults in decent editors are usually language dependent. I'm not familiar with these editors, but... come on - if they use one default for all files, OP should use a better tool.
Yes, but I don't normally program in python, so I never did. When I had to, I never thought of changing it (it wasn't for long anyways and was less of a thought out decision to do programming in vim)
Get a code formatter. Ruff is popular. So is black. Never think about it again.