3 ms·

Curious. How do you line things up?

by ww520 8y ago

hmottestad 8y ago
Not OP, but I use Verdana in Java. Most things line up perfectly fine i IntelliJ. I have had someone on my team with an itch for lining up variable assignment. That was the one thing that looked off. int abc = 3 int defg = 4 int bigTestVaribale = 6
- edejong 8y ago
  (Another proportional font user) These cause problems in diffs as well. Change bigTestVarible to bigTestVAriable and all three lines show as changed. Nevertheless, for teams that insist, the auto code formatter makes it look ‘nice’ for them. Personally, I think vertical alignment apart from indentation is a mistake for more than these reasons. It implies a structure where there is none.
Stratoscope 8y ago
> Curious. How do you line things up? I don't! :-) I spent many years lining things up. I would write code like this: foobar(firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg); (For the sake of discussion, assume that those arguments were too long to just put it all on one line, so you would naturally want to use multiple lines.) Then when I realized that 'foobar' wasn't such a good name, I had to re-align all the code: doTheRealThing(firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg); At some point, maybe 20 years ago, I got really tired of this. So I thought, "what if I just use indentation instead of trying to line things up in columns?" Which led to this: foobar( firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg ); And when I renamed the function, I didn't have to move everything around any more: doTheRealThing( firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg ); Instead of every line changing, only one line changed. [1] After I adopted this style, I noticed that the code editor I was using at the time supported proportional fonts, so I got curious and tried one - I think it was Verdana. And sure enough, the code was just as readable as it was before. If you don't line things up in columns but instead just use indentation, then a proportional font works just as well as monospaced. [1] Some will say "just ignore whitespace in your VCS diffs, and this won't be a problem." But I want to know about whitespace changes, just like I want to know about any other change.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Not a fan of proportional fonts for coding, but the point about refactoring affecting indentation is well worth reiterating. If you have ever dug through source control history, you know that there's value in not touching the lines unnecessarily. Unfortunately, most common coding styles that advocate lining things up do this wrong, such that a single rename can affect several times as many lines that are completely unrelated.
- Fellshard 8y ago
  This does force you into a style where lists of indented things require a new line - not necessarily bad, just an observable side effect, and can cause problems if you share a codebase that maintains a different style.
  - Stratoscope 8y ago
    Very true, if you are working on an existing codebase, you ought to follow whatever style it uses. Interestingly, one of the reasons sometimes cited for using alignment is that it reduces the number of lines of code needed for a statement or expression. But as often as not, I've seen that backfire because the code gets pushed farther and farther to the right, eventually resulting in more lines of text instead of fewer. I posted an example from the Rust/Servo code in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18962177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18962177 This code in their old column-aligned style is actually one line taller than the indentation style they recently switched to.
- ethelward 8y ago
  > I had to re-align all the code: Cannot you just have your editor do that for you?
  - Stratoscope 8y ago
    It was about 25 years ago that I stopped using alignment, and the editors I was using didn't have that kind of auto-formatting. But there was more to it: I realized that I didn't like column alignment any more. It didn't make the code any more readable, and in many cases it made it less readable. A more recent example of a group that abandoned alignment is the Rust and Servo teams at Mozilla. Their code style used to look like this: let mut rewrites = try_opt!(subexpr_list.iter() .rev() .map(|e| { rewrite_chain_expr(e, total_span, context, max_width, indent) }) .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>()); A year or so ago they changed to a purely indentation-based style: let mut rewrites = try_opt!( subexpr_list .iter() .rev() .map( |e| { rewrite_chain_expr( e, total_span, context, max_width, indent ) }) .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>() ); They found this style to have advantages over alignment, perhaps for some of the same reasons that I prefer it.
teddyh 8y ago
I would suggest that using elastic tabstops¹ is the only reasonable system for doing that. Sadly, the industry seems to be stuck in a local maxima where the simultaneous jump to both using proportional fonts (which would be better) and using elastic tabstops for alignment (which would be easier), constitutes too large of a distance to bridge in a single leap, and either one by itself isn’t worth the effort. Of course, if you already have made one of these two jumps, it should be a no-brainer to make the other one as well. 1. http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  I think it's even worse: the big problem with elastic tabstops is that you can't just adopt them on your own. You are requiring everyone who reads your code to use them if they want to see it formatted properly. Proportional fonts are different. Anyone can use them without interfering with readability regardless of the fonts and editors that others use. If you look at my code, you will never know whether I wrote it in a proportional font or a monospaced font.
  - teddyh 8y ago
    > You are requiring everyone who reads your code to use [elastic tabstops] if they want to see it formatted properly. It is not quite as bad as you make it sound. While editors which haven't yet implemented the elastic tabstops mechanism may not align some text properly in files where tabs were used with elastic tabstops, the problem isn't that bad. All leading tabs (indentation) will be okay, and the chances of text not aligning correctly diminishes as the width between tabstops increases. — http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

Curious. How do you line things up?

by ww520 8y ago

Curious. How do you line things up?

Not OP, but I use Verdana in Java. Most things line up perfectly fine i IntelliJ. I have had someone on my team with an itch for lining up variable assignment. That was the one thing that looked off. int abc = 3 int defg = 4 int bigTestVaribale = 6

edejong 8y ago
(Another proportional font user) These cause problems in diffs as well. Change bigTestVarible to bigTestVAriable and all three lines show as changed. Nevertheless, for teams that insist, the auto code formatter makes it look ‘nice’ for them. Personally, I think vertical alignment apart from indentation is a mistake for more than these reasons. It implies a structure where there is none.

Stratoscope 8y ago

> Curious. How do you line things up? I don't! :-) I spent many years lining things up. I would write code like this: foobar(firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg); (For the sake of discussion, assume that those arguments were too long to just put it all on one line, so you would naturally want to use multiple lines.) Then when I realized that 'foobar' wasn't such a good name, I had to re-align all the code: doTheRealThing(firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg); At some point, maybe 20 years ago, I got really tired of this. So I thought, "what if I just use indentation instead of trying to line things up in columns?" Which led to this: foobar( firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg ); And when I renamed the function, I didn't have to move everything around any more: doTheRealThing( firstArg, secondArg, thirdArg ); Instead of every line changing, only one line changed. [1] After I adopted this style, I noticed that the code editor I was using at the time supported proportional fonts, so I got curious and tried one - I think it was Verdana. And sure enough, the code was just as readable as it was before. If you don't line things up in columns but instead just use indentation, then a proportional font works just as well as monospaced. [1] Some will say "just ignore whitespace in your VCS diffs, and this won't be a problem." But I want to know about whitespace changes, just like I want to know about any other change.

int_19h 8y ago
Not a fan of proportional fonts for coding, but the point about refactoring affecting indentation is well worth reiterating. If you have ever dug through source control history, you know that there's value in not touching the lines unnecessarily. Unfortunately, most common coding styles that advocate lining things up do this wrong, such that a single rename can affect several times as many lines that are completely unrelated.
Fellshard 8y ago
This does force you into a style where lists of indented things require a new line - not necessarily bad, just an observable side effect, and can cause problems if you share a codebase that maintains a different style.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  Very true, if you are working on an existing codebase, you ought to follow whatever style it uses. Interestingly, one of the reasons sometimes cited for using alignment is that it reduces the number of lines of code needed for a statement or expression. But as often as not, I've seen that backfire because the code gets pushed farther and farther to the right, eventually resulting in more lines of text instead of fewer. I posted an example from the Rust/Servo code in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18962177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18962177 This code in their old column-aligned style is actually one line taller than the indentation style they recently switched to.
ethelward 8y ago
> I had to re-align all the code: Cannot you just have your editor do that for you?
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  It was about 25 years ago that I stopped using alignment, and the editors I was using didn't have that kind of auto-formatting. But there was more to it: I realized that I didn't like column alignment any more. It didn't make the code any more readable, and in many cases it made it less readable. A more recent example of a group that abandoned alignment is the Rust and Servo teams at Mozilla. Their code style used to look like this: let mut rewrites = try_opt!(subexpr_list.iter() .rev() .map(|e| { rewrite_chain_expr(e, total_span, context, max_width, indent) }) .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>()); A year or so ago they changed to a purely indentation-based style: let mut rewrites = try_opt!( subexpr_list .iter() .rev() .map( |e| { rewrite_chain_expr( e, total_span, context, max_width, indent ) }) .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>() ); They found this style to have advantages over alignment, perhaps for some of the same reasons that I prefer it.

teddyh 8y ago

I would suggest that using elastic tabstops¹ is the only reasonable system for doing that. Sadly, the industry seems to be stuck in a local maxima where the simultaneous jump to both using proportional fonts (which would be better) and using elastic tabstops for alignment (which would be easier), constitutes too large of a distance to bridge in a single leap, and either one by itself isn’t worth the effort. Of course, if you already have made one of these two jumps, it should be a no-brainer to make the other one as well. 1. http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

Stratoscope 8y ago
I think it's even worse: the big problem with elastic tabstops is that you can't just adopt them on your own. You are requiring everyone who reads your code to use them if they want to see it formatted properly. Proportional fonts are different. Anyone can use them without interfering with readability regardless of the fonts and editors that others use. If you look at my code, you will never know whether I wrote it in a proportional font or a monospaced font.
- teddyh 8y ago
  > You are requiring everyone who reads your code to use [elastic tabstops] if they want to see it formatted properly. It is not quite as bad as you make it sound. While editors which haven't yet implemented the elastic tabstops mechanism may not align some text properly in files where tabs were used with elastic tabstops, the problem isn't that bad. All leading tabs (indentation) will be okay, and the chances of text not aligning correctly diminishes as the width between tabstops increases. — http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/