…is it truly that bad? npm is the reason I don’t even install software based on node on my machines… python doesn’t seem nearly as bad by comparison? (I run it, just don’t like to write it) Maybe it’s worse than I realize
Perl is the only language that looks just as incomprehensible before and after a rot13 transformation.
Python on the other hand is the only language that will cause your application to stop working because you mixed up tabs and spaces, even though it looks perfectly fine on your scr.
It is absolutely fine to mix tabs and spaces in Python, as long as you are consistent about it. It’s not recommended though, as it’s easy to mess up if you’re not paying attention. Most IDE’s will convert tabs to spaces anyway so it’s a bit of a non-issue.
In Lisp, however, both errors are much harder to make (not even considering GNU Emacs’s superb auto-indentation - which is what most Lispers use these days, as far as I know):
The reason C becomes relevant to Python users isn’t typically because the interpreter is written in C, but because so many important libraries (especially numpy) are implemented in C.