It's the python litmus test, basically. I think a large number of people (including me) can live with it (and maybe even appreciate the vertical space improvements) while a different but still large number of people (like you) can't stand it (and perhaps find it to be an intolerable source of programming errors.)
I think if it was just that I might have eventually tolerated it, but it's a really big one which meant I approached every other part of Python with much lower tolerance for anything else which didn't just perfectly match what I want...
