The lambda thing is not about whitespace indentation. It is a purposeful decision that if you need more than one line to do it, it should have a name. At first

The lambda thing is not about whitespace indentation. It is a purposeful decision that if you need more than one line to do it, it should have a name. At first I disliked this, but it does nudge you towards readability, which winds up to be a good thing. And if you look at it, there is very little space difference between an unnamed lambda and an embedded function: def lambda_version(): a = lambda x: line one line two # note: this sort-of requires the idea of implicit return, which Python does not have outside of lambda a() def named_version(): def lambda_replacement(): line one return line two lambda_replacement()