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"more text in an eye fixation" is not necessarily a good thing for reading code, because code is semantically more dense than regular text. I think one will not
by soren 17y ago
"more text in an eye fixation" is not necessarily a good thing for reading code, because code is semantically more dense than regular text. I think one will not be able to absorb all information and therefore not get a faster reading experience due to re-reading. I find the fixed-width font example easier to read, because it appears not as cramped as the proportional-width example, and I can easier get an overview of what the code does.
- yungchin 17y agoAgreed - I don't think the speed-limiting factor when reading code is how fast it transfers from screen to brain. That's totally different with prose, where you often skip over almost 90% of the characters because the choice of words that fit the context comes naturally - not quite the same for function call arguments... A possible benefit of fixed-width: say you take a for-loop (which you can probably recognise even skipping over 95% of the characters) - now your brain wants to extract the indices at which it starts and ends: it seems to me a fixed-width font makes it easier to predict where you'll find the indices in the given line. (Not sure if that's how my eye-coordination really works, but it feels like it does...)