this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming
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You can create some really ugly code in spite of the forced indentation in python. Indentation does not really help here at all. In all languages you can correctly or incorrectly format things. A code formatter strictly applying a coding standard helps far more here than indents vs bracers. Take a look at black it takes the pep8 standards and adds more strict things on top making code look a lot more consistent and thus makes it easier to read.
And all formatters will indent code consistently, so having it as part of the language parser does not really help improve readability at all. And even without a formatter everyone I know will still correctly indent their code no matter the language used. But sometimes forcing new lines to have a meaning does make things worst - just look at pythons lambdas which have to be a single line.
Indentations does not really help readability that much in case of really, really, long code, and in some cases, a code can execute without with unexpected result because of one single indentation being off. Both of these why I like things like curly braces/brackets and terminators like endif/fi/done/end/etc. But, at the end of the day, if there's a readability problem, then that's a sign that the code needs to be reworked on.
Indentation can be wrong, but braces can't?
Braces too can be wrong. But, one is less likely to get it wrong. Modern editors often allows one to highlight matching braces immediately after selection, and rainbow braces(if available) makes it clear on the nest level.