Newline and copy above line's indentation

[Vas Vas <whiterocket@outlook.com>]

Hello, I've been using emacs since last November, migrating from
vim. Something I've missed is the indentation behaviour, specifically
newline copying the above line's indentation without any
syntax-awareness. I understand emacs' indentation is much more
powerful, but it's easier customising emacs than changing habits. The
hack I've ended up with is:

	(defun copy-whitespace-above-and-indent()
		(interactive)
		(setq old-point (point))
		(previous-line)
		(beginning-of-line)
		(setq start (point))
		(beginning-of-line-text)
		(setq end (point))
		(goto-char old-point)
		(newline)
		(insert (buffer-substring start end)))

I was wondering if there's a more elegant solution to this, such as by
using emacs' existing indentation mechanisms, or by a cleaner
implementation of that function.