[codesnik]

nobody serious uses indentation as a bad point against Python. Ruby pretty much could work with indentation instead of "end" almost without drawbacks. Maybe irb would be slightly less convenient, and that's it. Whitespace IS significant in ruby too, it's just goes so much along with the programmer's intuition that it rarely bites anyone.

[johntdaly]

Indentation was seriously being used as a point against Python when I came to Ruby and we had lots of DSLs that where indentation based back then. I always felt that do be BS and I think it is meant seriously here too, in this article. I do agree that isn’t an argument I have heard used seriously in a long time tough.

[zahlman]

The usual argument is that bracketed syntax rather than indentation-based syntax makes it possible/easier to have multi-line anonymous functions (such as with Ruby's block syntax), and especially to use them within more complex expressions.

Pythonistas generally consider that a misfeature.

[codesnik]

You can have indentation based syntax and ; for multiple statements in one line, or something even more powerful. But it doesn't matter.

Main power of blocks is not being multiline or being closure-like, many languages have this. But blocks are not just anonymous functions or lambdas, they have ability to return from the outer method (or from the method to which it was passed with break), acting as a powerful tool for creating your own flow control structures if needed, or just replacing "for". Of the languages I know or heard of only smalltalk does the same.

You can live without those, you can live even without early return, but blocks are not a misfeature, it's a great and intuitive tool. And python's rudimentary lambdas make me cry a little.

[igouy]

> Of the languages I know

https://docs.toit.io/language/blocks-and-lambdas