Member-only story
Python Indentation: Is It That Bad?
Does it make Python’s syntax difficult and prone to errors?
So many authors criticizing Python, even here on Medium, point out that one of the biggest problems of Python is its strict indentation rules. Let’s consider if this is indeed the case.
Python does require you to implement a particular indentation style, and it’s very strict about that. If you don’t, you risk getting IndentationError or, even worse, incorrect code. Critics like to list other languages, like Java, C#, or R, which let you indent your code however you want, and they stress how much they miss this freedom in Python.
Would indentation freedom lead to better Python code? Is indentation really that bad a thing? Do you really miss that indentation freedom? To answer these questions, let’s jump into some examples.
Examples
Consider the following code:
It’s code for a mockup of an app rather than of an actual app, but this does not matter. I do not ask you to read the code in detail. Instead, just look at it and pay attention to the use of indentation and curly brackets. Pay attention to whether you like the style of the syntax.
Yes, it’s Python! But it’s a different Python; a Python from a different world; a Python that gives you indentation freedom — indent the way you want, and it’s fine. But of course, we cannot simply give up indentation. We need something else to organize the code. So, the code above uses curly brackets. This solution seems like a good idea. These other languages that do not use indentation use curly brackets, and hence our please-remove-indentation-from-Python Python uses them, too.
This does not mean, of course, that you must not use indentation in our new Python. Do whatever you want! You want to use the regular Python indentation style? Do it. You want to break its flow? Do it. Do whatever you want, but in so doing, do not forget to use curly brackets. Indentation freedom, here we come!
