Newline and copy above line's indentation

[Vas Vas]

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.