indentation: enough already!

[T. William Wells]

In article <3229 at ingr.UUCP> crossgl at ingr.UUCP (Gordon Cross) writes:
: Normally, much valuable information can be obtained from this newsgroup but
: the recent bantering concerning identation??  Come on, enough already!  My
: feeling on this matter is that ANY programmer will ALWAYS be most productive
: without artificial restrictions on mundane things as indentation "standards".

Well, I'm glad you labeled it as "your feeling". Because that is all
that it is. And your feeling is wrong.

While I'm not going to advocate any particular indentation style, I am
going to advocate that one must have an indentation style.

Indentation is a matter of readability.  A consistent indentation
style has the following effect: that the reader of the code can use
subconscious processes to determine significant details about the
code, thus leaving his consciousness free to figure out the hard
things. This has two effects: the coder makes fewer errors as he
develops his code, and the maintainer's job is made much, much easier.

: Back in my school days, one professor tried to enforce his indentation style
: on the class (you could lose up to 25 points for violations!!).

Good for him!

:                                                                  I in
: addition to others found "his" style impossible to work with and quickly
: reverted to our own.

And what made you feel that yours was any good? Weren't you in his
class to learn?

:                       When the grades came out, it was as expected:  DOCKED!
: Then we took all this to the dean and got the grades reversed.  The dean's
: reason was that he felt such requirements had no bearing on a student's
: ability to learn how to write good programs.

Boo! Fire the dean! "... those who can't teach, administrate" seems
to describe him all too well.

:                             As for me, regardless of "standards" I will
: continue to code using MY style throughout eternity...

Don't apply to Proximity (the company I work for) for a job, you
won't get one. We have several *very* good C programmers. We all code
to the same standard.  Our existence disproves your belief.

---
Bill
{uunet|novavax}!proxftl!twwells!bill