Your second example though exists in exact the same way in python and ruby. Some people prefer to hunt for missing comma's and brackets, others for spaces.
I think that's a matter of taste. Coming from python, I've quite enjoyed coffee-script's syntax and I've actually done something in between, using brackets for objects just because I like the readability of it, but avoiding all semicolons and taking advantage of the indentation for code blocks.
Yes, the second is a bit forced, couldn't remember what was the other case I banged my head against the desk. I'm a Python programmer too, maybe that's why I expected the language will prevent me from mismatching blocks of code. Well, even sass and haml (which aren't full-blown programming languages) aren't that easy to mess up. Using Python convention (4 spaces indent) instead of the unofficial but common ruby/js/sass ones (2 spaces) helps a bit to spot out obvious bad indents, but still - in general I don't find the language trustworthy enough to jump into something big with it (for all the reasons I listed before).
btw added a link above with some more syntax gotchas.
I think that's a matter of taste. Coming from python, I've quite enjoyed coffee-script's syntax and I've actually done something in between, using brackets for objects just because I like the readability of it, but avoiding all semicolons and taking advantage of the indentation for code blocks.