It's weird to me to as a programmer to categorize space/tabs and new lines as empty or invisible.

It only makes sense if you're writing by hand on paper or designing a page, sure wherever you don't write is empty. But even then that's still visible space.

Then most language we currently use still rely on spaces in critical ways. `public function a()` and `publicfunctiona()`are not equivalent and there's no replacement character for the spaces.

Now, more power to you to like braces, same way some languages like dollar signs.