[river_styx]

good programmers are forced to program simply so that future generations of bad programmers can read their code.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? I generally try follow the "code such that nearly anyone can understand" mantra. Helps keep things simple and concise.

[ardit33]

I actually don't like forced readability like the python whitespace as I think it stifles creativity, and the only way it makes code better to read is by forced formatting (the forced white space) while your code can still have hard to read logical loops, blocks, variables.

In a way, it stiffles creativity just for a small gain of formating/readibility.

Plus, with modern IDEs it is very simple to format the code the way you want. In eclipse you have RightClick -> Source -> Format then viola, your code looks the way you want.

Having worked with both python and java, I have enountered more hard to read code in python than in java, (maybe this is due to the superior tools/IDEs in java).

As for ada, i thought it was a great language to start learning programming. Exceptions are verbose, and it is an easy language to pick up, as it looks a lot like Pascal. I learned it my freshman year, but I never used it in a production capacity and I wouldn't consider doing anything serious with it right now.

[nailer]

'and the only way it makes code better to read is by forced formatting (the forced white space)'

Indentation is required when writing in any language as a matter of courtesy. Python just doesn't ask you to delimit your blocks of code a second time by unnecessarily requiring brackets.

[ezmobius]

at the high cost of crippled one line lambdas, no thanks

[sgk284]

I'd argue that there is nothing crippling about it. You can define functions anywhere, if you need a multi-line lambda just define a function and be done with it. Multi-line lambdas are messy... this constraint keeps your code sane.

You can nitpick all you want, but the fact is I can start reading just about anyone's python code and feel like it's my own because styles are consistent across the board. A lot of this has to do with the tight community, but the fact that it's all reinforced through syntax constraints is a huge plus.