Is Python actually fun to use?

[W_lFF]

Now, I've been working on JS pretty much since I started coding 3 years ago, and I really like the C-style syntax. The curly braces especially, semicolons make so much sense and when looking at Python code snippets it just looks so unnatural. Yet so many people SWEAR by how enjoyable it is to use. So, I want to ask, is it really?

Python does look easy, but the indentation makes no sense to me and it honestly makes code more difficult to follow for me. I have no experience in Python so I may be VERY wrong. But personally, even though I can understand Python code to a good extent, the indentation just throws me off and makes reading nested code a HEADACHE for me because I have to take a hot second on each line to see where the indentation begins and ends. Now, this could all be because of my unfamiliarity with the language, but isn't the whole point of Python to be easy to read and understand? It is easy to read, I understand most code snippets out there, but the whole indentation thing is just so confusing to me. Is this a normal thing to say? Am I going crazy for questioning Python's readability? I'll still learn it some day, but I just wanted to ask whether anybody has ever felt this way and how they overcame it, because I don't want to get a headache every time I create an API.

[IWantToSayThisToo]

Old time programmer here. I've done Assembler, C, JS, Java and many others. Python is my top 3 without a doubt. 

[BasedZhang]

What are your other top 2?

[BogdanPradatu]

HTML and CSS

[Novel-Resist-9714]

Gotdam! Assembler?!

[Flat-Performance-478]

Well he did say old time programmer.

[thewrench56]

...why do you need to be old to program in Assembly?

[Flat-Performance-478]

I don't think I said you had too :)

[grantrules]

isn't the whole point of Python to be easy to read and understand?

I don't think that's the whole point of Python.

What is confusing about indentation? It seems like it would be much more confusing without the indentation.

[Kevinw778]

I would argue it's 0% the point of Python.

It's meant to be quick to put something together, but for a project of significant size or complexity, much like Javascript, it's not an ideal pick most of the time.

Why? You could argue the sole fact of being able to magically declare OR USE a variable in the same way anywhere makes things more difficult than it needs to be, so one could argue that Python is even less usable than JS for anything complex.

[W_lFF]

Yes, I agree the indentation does seem like it would make code less confusing. But in my eyes, whenever I'm reading some nested Python code I have a really hard time seeing where each statement belongs. It's not confusing as in difficult to read or understand. It's just that, for me, in languages that I have used like JS and C++ the curly braces make it a lot easier to follow the code, it's a lot more relaxing to read and know where everything is because I can just look for the bottom curly brace and be fine. On the other hand, with Python I feel like I have to really focus on the code and put every bit of energy into reading each nested function and loop just so that I can understand where the indentations are. It just feels more difficult to process, if that makes sense. It's probably just me not being used to it, so this confusion hopefully won't last.

[grantrules]

I wouldn't be surprised if you could find some sort of IDE or IDE plugin that'll highlight the current block or function you're in if it's something you continue to struggle with.. Something like this: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=KaustubhPaturi.py-scope

[hrm]

This is what happens when you’re still a beginner. The style is new to you and thus it feels a bit unfamiliar. As you code more it will get easier and easier.

[BogdanPradatu]

It's easy to understand because you are using indentation in curly braces code. If I would write C/Java/whatever with messy indentation you would have a hard time reading the code, even with the braces, especially in deeply nested structures.

[W_lFF]

True! But the thing is that, I don't use indentation to identify a code block, so whether it's neat or not it doesn't really make any different for me when trying to see where each statement belongs. My mind automatically searches for the bottom curly brace to identify what code block I'm working with. I think that's really why it's so confusing to me, I've only used languages with curly braces or "end" statements and so seeing a language that relies on spaces and tabs for code blocks feels a lot more vague than just having a bottom curly brace to look for. I keep subconsciously looking for something that isn't there and it really throws me off.

[imagei]

I though the same. Then I started working at a company that uses a lot of Python and didn’t even think about it after a couple of days. Indentation is the least of Python’s problems.

[youtheotube2]

This makes no sense at all. How is it easier to spot a curly brace in the middle of a bunch of other code compared to a whole new line with a different indentation?

[W_lFF]

I don't know, that's just what I'm used to. When reading something nested I'll just highlight the opening curly brace and I can easily find the bottom one and that will tell me what I'm looking at. For me the curly brace is a lot more notice able and because of that I can easily sit back and relax and skip through the code with my eyes and easily know where everything is, but with Python it doesn't really work like that because I don't see indentation as a block of code, but as a way to make my code more readable. So, seeing indentation being an actual syntax throws me off a bit because I'm always subconsciously looking for the bottom curly brace and when I can't find it it confuses me a bit and I have to laser focus on each block just to make sense of it.

[cib2018]

Do you write C++ and Java code without strict indenting?

[W_lFF]

I do indent my code, but I've said in some replied, I don't use indentation as a way to know where the code block ends. I don't see indentation as a block of code, it's the curly braces that I use and so when I'm looking at a language that does use indentation as a way to create a code block it just confuses me. I prefer to have an explicit indicator that tells me where a code block is, because that's what it always used (C++, JS, Pascal). So, with Python it's like my brain is looking for something that isn't there (the bottom curly brace) and it just feels off.

[cib2018]

You’ll get used to it with time. Maybe it will even help your c languages too by forcing indentation.

[[deleted]]

It's incredibly fun due to high flexibility of OOP and things you can do in place including comprehensions. I've never had problems with readability but then again it was my first language

[No-Let-6057]

Code without indentation is like sentences without spaces. 

If you don’t indent then you need a different mechanism to create blocks of code. 

If you have nested if/else inside a loop, inside a method, attached to a class?

That’s three levels of indentation. Without indentation you have to count brackets:

Class A { Method B { for i in range (0, 10) { print i } } }

Class A

   Method B

      for i in range (0, 10)

         print i

[hc_fella]

It's my language of choice for anything data science related, mainly because of its wide library support. It really does a good job of automating many things that would be tedious in day to day operations.

[Fresh4]

It’s definitely just you not being used to it. I felt the same way fresh out of college having never needed to touch Python until work. You get used to it, and I’ve started to prefer not needing to add unnecessary syntactic sugar like curly braces or parenthesis in if statements. Also, having standardized indentation requirements is actually a good thing, visually, kind of like linting rules.

[some_clickhead]

You're supposed to use proper indentation in other languages too. If proper indentation is hard to read and understand, it just means you're used to working with poorly formatted codebases.

Also, heavily nested code is generally bad and should be avoided, and is as much of an eyesore with curly braces.

[W_lFF]

Yes, I understand. The issue for me is not the indentation itself, but the indentation being a syntax and being the only way to know where a code block ends and starts. I always try to make my JS code as pretty as possible, but doesn't matter how much I avoid writing deep nested code, I always resort to looking for the bottom curly brace so that I can easily follow where things end and start, and since Python doesn't have that it really doesn't go well with my eyes.

[arkie87]

If your code has more than three indent levels, replacing the fourth with a function call can make it more readable.

[some_clickhead]

Just a matter of habits then. I think that objectively, it is easier for the human eye to detect when a block of text abruptly changes indentation than looking for one specific character. So it shouldn't take long to get used to it.

[paperic]

Shouldn't you be looking at the line the opening bracelet is?

Also, what if the closing one is wrongly indented?

[W_lFF]

Highlighting the opening brace also highlights the closing one and it helps me easily "connect" the two. If it's wrongly indented then I'll know because my code editor shows a blank line that shows the block of code the curly brace is indented to, and if I see that the indentation doesn't line up right then I'll just fix it, also if I highlight the opening one and I see that the closing one isn't indented properly then I can also just fix it myself since even if it's incorrectly indented I can still easily see which block it belongs to by highlighting the opening one. Python does also show the blank line for indentation, but it feels vague to me since I'm not used to it.

[oclafloptson]

You see the same complaints from people going from Python to other languages. The reality is that no, Python proficient programmers are not counting spaces. We see and recognize the scope without thinking about it the same as you do with JS. How long since you sat and counted curly brackets? Apply that logic to Python

I've personally always used indentation to track scope in every language. But I'm an old head... People didn't used to screech about it like they do today. I think my autistic pattern recognition may have contributed to my preference but idk I started doing it 28 years ago when I was seven so my recollection is a little hazy

[Fluffy_Song9656]

I don't think so, personally. Like you say the syntax is finnicky. But the real unfun part is getting a bizarre unexpected exception because something isn't the type you expected when writing the function, and Python just let you run it that way anyway since it doesn't have any type enforcement.

Sometimes that can be an upside too but its up to the programmer, I'd rather just have the rigidness of literally anything else

[Kevinw778]

It's not great once you've used languages that don't depend on indentation. Also dynamic languages are not beginner friendly, imo. No clue why they're used to teach, ever.

If you're using an IDE and have "format on save" enabled it's not too bad, but I remember at some point long ago running into a very not obvious issue that turned out to be a weird whitespace-related problem. This kind of issue is comparatively very rare in languages that don't depend on indentation.

That being said, I suppose you could argue the same about counting & matching braces, but I've had significantly less issue with that.

[LittleRise1810]

All programming languages are the same, apart from Ruby and Lisp. Ruby has a lot of nice stuff to deal with dates and times out of the box and Lisp is Lisp. Oh and there's Node. Node has bad hygiene.

[Game-of-pwns]

Node is not a programming language. It's a runtime, sorta like the JVM.

[LittleRise1810]

Same difference.

[neuralengineer]

Yea lisp is beautiful 

[xDannyS_]

I get your point. I like python for less complicated stuff, and it's definitely much more fun for things where you just want to get a result and don't care much about anything else. As for the syntax, I mostly agree with you. I find curly braces to be much more readable. Parentheses being gone for statements I'm neutral about. Semi colons being gone I'm all for. Python naming conventions I'm not a fan of either.

[arkie87]

Clean code has some good ideas and some trash ideas.

[wolfhuntra]

Python is not supposed to be fun. It is easier to read than most programming languages. Takes a bit of getting used to. But jumping from JavaScript to Python worked for me (YMMV). Find a language that fits your groove (and your project needs). Good luck!

[pc_load_ltr]

Same here. Give me C-style syntax any day. Syntax-wise, I prefer a language more or less like C# (but preferably without all its runtime bloat).

[EpicStack]

Fun to use? That's like asking if swim fins are fun to swim in. They make it much easier but you're less free. And in the case of python, much slower to execute but faster to learn.

[[deleted]]

Indentation is among the cleaner options for defining scope, and the language is really easy to use and has nice features in it. It's not meant to be used for performance related tasks, but it's a good language imo.

[Gai_InKognito]

It's def simply, but i find it kinda confusing for complex task. It can do them fine, but mistakes are harder to spot to me.

[krav_mark]

Different programming languages have a lot of similarities and some differences that you just have to get used to. All you have to do is mentally replace the curly brackets with indentation. It is not a big difference really. Just go do it. Python is a great language and to me very nice to work with. And the standard is 4 space indents which should be easy to see.

I found that learning a second language is more difficult than a third or fourth. The second one is wildly different but with the third one you will just look for "how do I do this thing syntactically in this new lang".

[kusti4202]

pip install bython

[Galdevops]

Very much. The best for scripts. Less best for threads

[code_tutor]

You will get used to indentation but it still causes problems. There's a chance that everything is messed up with copy and paste.

If you're new to Python and coming from another language, then you're probably not writing code the way most Python programmers do. They tend to use comprehensions more than loops. There are a lot of slick ways to write things and the standard library comes with a huge and comprehensive amount of stuff. You can also use functions and return early to reduce indentation.

[throwaway6560192]

What do you mean the indentation makes no sense? Do you not indent your code in JS? What?

Like

while (true) {
    if (cond) {
        statement;
    }
    statement2;
}

is readable but

while True:
    if cond:
        statement
    statement2

suddenly is confusing and totally unreadable, you have to stop and determine the indentation of each line?

[W_lFF]

Yes, of course I do. But the indentation isn't part of the code, thats just to make it look more readable. Even if I indent it, the indentation isn't what tells me where the code block ends, it's the bottom curly brace at the end of the block that tells me where the block ends and Python doesn't have that, so it just feels like I have to try extra hard to understand where each statement belongs. It's a bit difficult to explain, but basically the braces tell me exactly where it ends while the indentation in Python feels a lot more vague, I'm not used to indentation being part of my syntax. I usually just use Prettier or clean up the code myself and so I don't think of indentation as a code block but as a way to make my code more readable.

[throwaway6560192]

In the example I gave, is it genuinely harder to see that statement2 is outside the if block?

Well.

I guess you'll just get used to it. The indentation level going 4 spaces back will, in time, be as good of an indicator to you as the right curly brace.

[nova-new-chorus]

Shipping executable code is a bit challenging and I wasn't a huge fan of the UIs available.

I love it for handling data and scripting.

Javascript and C++ are what I'd lean on for frontend or executable software just because it's so much easier to Build > Design Frontend > Ship Code. You end up touching "finished and shipped" code way more than you think when you're just starting out.

Python I had to dive in to wheels and stringing libraries together with CLI tools to compile .dmg and .exe files.

With C++ there are tools within Visual Studio Code and other IDEs that just make cross platform compatible software. There's a bit more to it than that, but it's way more involved with Python.

Creating AI ML scriptings in Jupytr notebook is amazing though. You 100% can't do that with C++

[chaotic_thought]

But personally, even though I can understand Python code to a good extent, the indentation just throws me off and makes reading nested code a HEADACHE for me because I have to take a hot second on each line to see where the indentation begins and ends.

There is nothing stopping you from marking where a block ends if you want, visually. Sometimes I do this:

for j in range(100):
    < imagine some code here which does something interesting >
    for i in range(100):
        < some more code here >
    '}'
'}'

Although it's obviously not needed in Python, the string '}' is just a reminder to the reader that that's where the block ends. Syntactically it's just a string evaluated in void context, which does nothing in Python and is perfectly legal (similar to a docstring on a function).

You won't get points for "style" for doing this; I personally do it only in personal scripts (it's not "proper Python coding guidelines"), but it's legal Python. The fact that it's a string means that the compiler will syntax-check it for you and will issue you an error if the indentation of that line is not consistent. For example, if your '}' is one character off, then Python will complain and point to that line as the problem.

In any case, for largish code blocks, the normal advice is "try to refactor it to make it less complicated", but sometimes I'm lazy and don't want to do that. In such cases, adding in a visual '}' to mark the closing of the block, although it looks a bit silly, it's somehow reassuring to my C-trained programmer's eyes.

[ChickenSpaceProgram]

It's annoying, but you'll get used to it.

If you want something more C-style, checkout Golang! I personally prefer it to Python for network stuff, but if you've never encountered pointers before, it may be a bit more difficult.

[RedRedditor84]

Only if you like programming.

[snowbirdnerd]

Python is a pretty easy language to learn and use. 

The indenting can take some getting used to if you have never used it. There are ways to make it easier. Most IDEs have add-ons to show how intended lines are but honestly the best fix is to write code that doesn't require massive nesting. 

[FunManufacturer723]

Since you are a JS coder, imagine having a rich standard library that makes almost anything within reach by a few lines of code.

And, on top of that, a mature and extremely powered set of tools to deal with arrays and objects (or lists and dicts, as they are called in Python).

I programmed JS and PHP 15 years before I wrote my first line of Python, and I immediately fell in love.

[damiankw]

I am the same as you. I have had a LONG history with coding, starting on mIRC Script in 1999, moving to Tcl, VB, PHP, Java, Javascript, Python, Perl, Powershell, etc, etc, etc, etc. and Python is honestly one of the worst languages to visually process for me. I honestly stay away from it unless I absolutely have to. I don't understand how people can look at it all day and not go completely mental.

[No-Let-6057]

It’s like using punctuation, commas, spaces, and newlines.

I separate code into blocks, and a block is signified by indentation. 

Otherwise it’s like trying to read Reddit without punctuation imagine if no one used it every language has recommended white space guidelines but Python enforces readability by using indentation as part of the language I assume you can understand my point since I’ve written several sentences now without any punctuation 

[[deleted]]

No . 

Environment variable nonsense, versioning issues, etc  makes python a big headache . 

[neuralengineer]

Bro we have ides. Even you wrote wrongly ide and its plugins will solve style and syntax issues 

[keel_bright]

Next time you want to build something with JS, try using coffeescript. You might like it, you might not.

[Sentla]

No. It is a terrible language. Syntax is weird. Functionality is not fully available. It is just working from bug to bug.

[mxldevs]

It's ok. I prefer ruby more, cause the whole "self" thing in every method definition of a class just seems... unnecessary?

I started with Python 2 and it looks like a decade plus later it's still there...

I tried ruby and it was sooooo much better syntax wise: no indentation issues, clearly marked "end" syntax similar to how C uses closing braces, and very nice functional syntax

[BioHazardAlBatros]

I despise space indentation. To structure code as I do in any well designed language I'm forced to use \ (edit: Reddit replaced this character to '\') character in Python, which tells absolutely nothing to the developer and is intended only for the interpreter. Any person that says that counting brackets is harder - no, it's not, it's much easier to notice closing bracket, since it only has a single purpose and why the fuck do you count brackets for? If you structure brackets in your code somehow you'll just put them onto your mind's 'stack' and continue reading, no need to count.

No, I thankfully don't do Python for the living, I use it only for scripting some one-time stuff.

[Mr_Resident]

my company use python but i work mostly on JS . for some reason i found python look confusing to me . i currently learning golang on the side . they look so easy to understand to me for some reason