> The conventions around whitespace and code formatting are not universal How is it not though? For every mainstream language it's standard convention to inden

> The conventions around whitespace and code formatting are not universal How is it not though? For every mainstream language it's standard convention to indent conditions and functions. > But, if your language cares which of the visually indistinguishable but otherwise incompatible kinds of non-printing characters you're formatting your code with, then it can still fail while visually communicating the correct information to the reader. This a complete non-issue to me. The pros of significant whitespace vastly overshadow any possible benefit of letting people choose tabs vs spaces and the latter issue is easily solved with IDEs anyway. I don't see people having any issues with this using Python either. Personally, I think even naming conventions should be enforced by the language as well so people can stop wasting time debating insignificant details and in code reviews.