For example, you have

    if check_something():
        wall_of_text = textwrap.dedent("""
    this
    is
    a
    multiline
    string
    """.strip("\n"))

I hope you agree it's ugly. And you want to make it

    if check_something():
        wall_of_text = textwrap.dedent("""\
            this
            is
            a
            multiline
            string
        """.strip("\n"))

But I don't know any formatter which does this automatically. Because the change here not only changes the looking, it changes semantic. The formatter has to understand that after `textwrap.dedent(_.strip("\n"))` the result does not change and that's hard. So formatter just leave it alone. But it's extremely obvious to a human. Or maybe extremely obvious to a LLM too.

Yeah, string """ blocks I also have to do manually. Though that example never interfered with AI autocomplete in my experience.

Isn't indentation 'non deterministic' in Python? E.g. if I have the following:

    if (foo):
        bar()
    hum()

how can anything other than a human decide if that 3rd line should be indented as it is or by one more level?

And this is one reason I still don't understand the use of python in large teams!

I suppose with very good tests, you might be able to catch something like this, but it seems impossible to me how a PR reviewer might catch a "bug" like this and not just assume that it's intentional.

One of my biggest gripes with python is the fact that the only way to create a local scope for variables is with functions.

I understand if statements not having their own scope for simplicity's sake, but the fact that `with` blocks don't is simply mind-bobbling to me. ``` with open("text.txt", 'w') as f: f.write("hello world") f.write("hello world") # at least the handle was automatically closed so it will give an IO error ```

It’s actually very useful to have context managers outlive their with blocks. They are not only used for files:

One example would be a timing context manager:

   with Timer() as t:
      …
   print(t.runtime)

Another example is mocks, where you want to inspect how many times a mock was called and with what arguments, after the mock context manager has finished.

I know it makes sense in the "scope-less" python philosopy but it still feels weird for me as a scope (ab)user in C++ and has caused me one headache or two in the past

Sorry for the borked code formatting

I learned about the `scoping` package today. Idk if it works exactly as I expect from other langs, though.

OTOH I’ve written Python professionally for about 25 years and I truly don’t think I’ve ever seen a bug due to accidental mis-indentation like that.

When I worked in python I made this exact mistake monthly.

How, though? Every code editor I've used supports holding indentation at a certain level until you change it, so if you write:

  if foo:
      bar()

and hit enter after the "bar()", it would drop you down so that the next thing you type would be under the "b". It's not really different from using curly brackets from the perspective of typing in code.

Cut and pasting code to move it around. Every editor was just slightly jittery about keeping the indentation levels consistent.

Completely agree, this is a common argument ever since Python existed. I've also used it for almost 25 years and these kind of indentation errors just don't happen. I see it the same as forgetting closing brace. Python programming writing C code might forget it initially, but C programmer absolutely will not forget it, it's in their muscle memory. And the same applies for dealing with indentation.

Even humans have trouble with that sometimes: https://www.blackduck.com/blog/understanding-apple-goto-fail...

Although, not in Python of course! :)

How does the IDEA/VSCode know when you're done with the if?

    if foo:
        bar # Obviously this is indented
        but_is_this() # supposed to be under the if?
        how.about(this) #?
    how.do_you(de) # indent in Python, if not manually?