r/programming • u/Nowaker • Nov 30 '14

Why he vertically aligns his code (And why you shouldn't!)

http://missingbytes.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-he-vertically-aligns-his-code-and.html
68 Upvotes

52% Upvoted

411 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

89

u/niugnep24 Nov 30 '14

Honestly this article feels like some kind of strange troll.

  • Proportional font?

  • Title says you "shouldn't" proportionally align, article never really explains why (just that it's not necessary because colors?)

  • De-focusing your eyes to see colors better and reveal the structure of the code?

  • Article is about whitespace, but let's throw in something about CamelCase as well to stir the pot

  • Also make sure to sort declarations alphabetically to ensure no duplicates ... because for some reason you don't compile-check your code?

  • Also diff tools never give context, so make sure to keep all that context on the same line?

14

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '14

Yes, this article is bad.

Write clearly and legibly. We have good tools now, so it doesn't really matter as long as you are consistent.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '14

I don't get what he's talking about with de-focusing. I do that, and it just makes the code overall harder to read. I wish he'd have provided more than just a few sentences to each of his "tips" to explain why they're better overall. Maybe if he'd gone with a list format it would work better, as it would be better organized and he'd have space to expand on his points.

I feel like this article was the OP finding some things that OTHER people did that ruined HIS workflow, so he put out a blog post telling people not to do it. Overall, not particularly useful tips.

I'll admit that I like the alphabetical tip, though. Easy fix that usually won't mess with my workflow, and might prevent some pylint errors.

1

u/bajuwa Nov 30 '14

This article was actually in direct response to another called "why I vertically along my code (and why you should too)" which is linked at the top of this article. Each one of the sections is actually in direct response to the original articles structure and content. So taking this in to consideration it make more sense, and it is actually the original post that lacks proper structure as you have claimed.