I've definitely gone back and forth with that, and felt the exact same way when I learned Python. And I agree - semantic whitespace is a really great feature that makes Python simpler in a lot of ways.

Where I start to like it less is when I think about how much structure it imposes on the code before you can even write a line - it has the potential to remove some degree of experimentation. And how easy, for a new user, it could be to get it just wrong enough to be problematic.

Don't count me as a hater though. I would love to write Ruby with semantic whitespace - HAML already gets me halfway there!