[dvlsg]

It really bothered me in python, but for some reason I didn't mind it in F#. Of course, some of that may be related to the fact that I enjoyed F# so much that I was willing to put up with significant whitespace. Or perhaps it's just been too long since I've used python and today it would bother me less.

[gmfawcett]

I thought F# was roughly an Ocaml clone. What significant whitespace does it have?

[dvlsg]

I'm pretty sure whitespace in F# is one way to control blocks. So anything further indented than an if is part of the if block. I'm definitely not an F# expert though, so I'm sure there's more to it than just that.

I also think there's a way to write F# that doesn't have significant whitespace, but uses a lot more keywords. Verbose syntax, I think that's called. I almost never see examples written that way, though.

[gmfawcett]

I can't speak for F#, but it does have its origins in Ocaml, and whitespace doesn't matter there. Try putting that entire if-block (or any other statement) all one one line, just to see what happens.