I would hazard a guess that it is because the statement allows for easily adding a `print varname` in your code while debugging.

It's two extra chars to write print(varname). One if your editor auto-inserts matching parens!

Since the space is replaced by the first paren, it's either 0 or 1 more chars :)

Shift-9 is more fiddly to type than space though :P

print(varname) is one extra keystroke -- and a whole more convenient than a statement when you want to do it in a lambda for debugging.

I don't know, but it bugs people. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6985792