Subj : Re: Is well written code a rare species ?
To   : comp.programming
From : Joe Butler
Date : Sat Aug 13 2005 07:08 pm

Maybe so for an 80 column terminal.  But we were equipped with some
new-fangled graphical monitors.  They comfortably display more than 80
characters per line.

Your book example is a classic non-sequitur.  Books have nothing to do with
code layout - code that is printed in books is often very dis-jointed.  Your
argument is totally illogical. Anyway, my personal preference for reading
paragraphs of English text is magazine column layout - do you think I'd want
to impose that as a coding standard - it would be madness.

Because a book's structure could be described as a collection of letters and
words, which is how you could described source code, you have made an
association between the two that has no place.  I wonder if your style of
parenthises, commas, etc. also follow book style (e.g. spaces after commas,
no space on the inside of parenthasis, etc.).  My style does. ( Or would you
write code in the following way? No spaces after commas,like this,and
this,with spaces inside parenthasis ( like this ) - in exploded source code
format, as I describe it, but with bits of compressed code where you would
really want visual clarity?

Let's just close with an example of why sticking religiously to 80-column
layout is so dumb (unless you are restricted to a text terminal):

.... ------70------80
..... stuff * dist_val +
x;

instead of
..... stuff * dist_val + x;

This was also given as one of the justifications for the 80-column layout -
so that the code printed out on paper well.  The silly thing was that the
code was hardly ever printed out (> 99% of the time we were working with it
on screen).  Any code that was printed was for debugging purposes and got
binned within minutes of being printed.  No one questioned if landscape
format might have been a better printing option.  So, you see, it didn't
make any sense - but what added insult to injury was the team went
apoplectic when I started to format my functions thus:

type
function name(
    type parameter1, // comment
    type parameter2, // comment
    type parameter3 // comment
    type parameter4 // comment
){
    blah blah
}

This style was described as "unreadable".  I do not exagerate: some of the
team almost fainted.  That tells me a lot about those programmers.

They had been indoctrinated into the following style:

type function name(type parameter1, type parameter2, type parameter3, type
parameter4)

(I don't know how they managed to reconcile this when it violated the
80-column rule.)


"akarl" <fusionfive@comhem.se> wrote in message
news:d1nLe.31419$d5.184799@newsb.telia.net...
> Joe Butler wrote:
> > I'm beginning to wonder if that programmer was a bit
> > autistic - he'd adhere religiously to the 80 column programming
'standard'
> > that got introduced by the mangler for some arbitary and ill-considered
> > reason but would produce entire files with just one single line comment
in
> > them.
>
> Actually, the "80 column programming standard" is a good one. That code
> which adheres to this standard is nicely displayed on standard terminals
> is one thing, but would you like to read a book that is formatted with
> more than 80 characters per line? Probably not. I think you would have a
> hard time even finding such a book.
>
> August

.