[nrr]

Hey, thanks for following up.

I always felt that repeating myself to the compiler (down to `procedure subprogram is begin`…`end subprogram`) or otherwise being verbose was something of a feature in the vein of defense in depth than the syntax not aging well. It never seemed to me like it was meant to impose clarity on the code, just that you were meant to file your subprograms and types in triplicate. It's useful as a backstop against trying to do things quickly instead of doing them deliberately.

At least, Ada's use of verbosity stands in stark contrast to COBOL, which does have the explicit aim to make things clear.

I'm mostly of the same mind as you in re Python's (and Haskell's and F#'s) whitespace-oriented ways of doing things, at least until the real world creeps in. I've had problems with early block termination because of mixed tabs and spaces that weren't readily apparent, and the language's toolchain wasn't particularly helpful in diagnosing them, leading me to lean on external tools. (COBOL at least has the heritage of being column-oriented, so indentation being significant is less problematic there.)