Why does nobody talk about how messy Python indentation is for brand new coders?

Ive been helping out at a weekly coding meetup in Portland for about 6 months now. Every single beginner we get trips up on Python indentation within the first 15 minutes of writing a loop. Everyone online acts like it's so clean and obvious but I watched a guy spend 20 minutes trying to figure out why his if statement wouldn't run. It was just one stray space before the print line. I think we should stop pretending it's beginner friendly just because the syntax is short. Has anyone else seen new folks get stuck on this more than they expected?

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blake_smith1mo ago

Funny you mention this, I actually read a blog post recently from a guy who taught coding bootcamps for like 5 years. He said the same thing, Python's indentation is the number one thing that trips up new people, way more than stuff like "what is a variable." It makes sense when you think about it, because a beginner's brain is already trying to wrap itself around loops and conditions. Then you add this invisible rule about spaces that you can't even see, it's like asking someone to learn a language where the grammar changes based on the font size. I watch people at the meetup here get paralyzed by it too, like they're scared to hit the tab key. It's not just you, that's for sure.