That is his point, I think. He doesn't want to be exposed to errors related to whitespace in the code. I feel the same way, and it's the number one reason I avoid Python.
Python and emacs are both popular, and I'm talking about default indent behavior for python in emacs, not some fringe or esoteric plugin for beautifying.
If that's buggy, then there's a larger problem in my opinion.
Re:Reading Simple Haskell
by userbinator on Saturday December 09, 2017 @02:36PM
(#15887614)
Beautifying C, for example, also can be tricky in the presence of nested comments
C comments do not nest.
Since C99, you've been able to have end-of-line comments inside a block comment.
Re:Reading Simple Haskell
by marcosdumay on Saturday December 09, 2017 @06:23PM
(#15888773)
Mixing tabs and spaces in Python leads to ambiguities.
Actually, in Haskell too, but as the GP said, it is almost impossible that it becomes a problem on practice.
For that to be valid criticism, it must be particularly hard to write a beautifier for languages with significant whitespace relative to other languages.
I don’t think it is. Beautifying C, for example, also can be tricky in the presence of nested comments (potentially of different types) and nested if statements, some without else clauses, some without {}.