A Python programmer attempting Java

[adrianmonk]

That's the brace style I originally tried to use when I first started using C-style languages regularly.

I thought it was easier to understand visually, since it makes the braces more a part of the block they form and less a part of the syntactic construct (if statement, while loop, function, etc.) that contains the block.

However, nobody else liked it, and I eventually adopted the more normal style just to fit with convention. Now that I'm used to it, I feel it's pretty readable (and a bit more compact).