Source Code Typography

For example, consider the alignment in the following, improved snippet from the blog post:

    var x        = shape.left(),
        y        = shape.right(),
        numSides = shape.sides();

The eye can't help but interpret closely packed things as groups. So the subliminal cue presented by the formatting above is that there is a parallel assignment from the group of expressions on the right to the group of variables on the left. That is, at some level the eye can't help but see the code above as

                   { e }
         { v }     { x }
    var  { a }  =  { p } ;
         { r }     { r }
         { s }     { s }

The less-formatted original version below actually represents the reality more faithfully because its shape does not suggest parallelism:

    var x = shape.left(),
        y = shape.right(),
        numSides = shape.sides();

Indeed, typography is a subtle and tricky thing.

I'm also not sure that I want a developer spending much of his brain space or time prettying up the code beyond what is currently considered well formatted code. While it might be nice, there's also probably better things she could be working on.

"It used to be thought that you could judge someone's character by looking at the shape of his head. Whether or not this is true of people, it is generally true of Lisp programs. Functional programs have a different shape from imperative ones. The structure in a functional program comes entirely from the composition of arguments within expressions, and since arguments are indented, functional code will show more variation in indentation. Functional code looks fluid on the page; imperative code looks solid and blockish, like Basic." -- On Lisp (http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html; page 30)

As function size grows, it doesn't look quite so pretty. An example from news.arc:

  (if no.user
      (submit-login-warning url title showtext text)
     (~and (or blank.url valid-url.url)
           ~blank.title)
      (submit-page user url title showtext text retry*)
     (len> title title-limit*)
      (submit-page user url title showtext text toolong*)
     (and blank.url blank.text)
      (let dummy 34
        (submit-page user url title showtext text bothblank*))
     (let site sitename.url
       (or big-spamsites*.site recent-spam.site))
      (msgpage user spammage*)
     (oversubmitting user ip 'story url)
      (msgpage user toofast*)
     (let s (create-story url process-title.title text user ip)
       (story-ban-test user s ip url)
       (when ignored.user (kill s 'ignored))
       (submit-item user s)
       (maybe-ban-ip s)
       "newest"))

  (if no.user
      : (submit-login-warning url title showtext text)
     (~and (or blank.url valid-url.url)
           ~blank.title)
      : (submit-page user url title showtext text retry*)
     (len> title title-limit*)
      : (submit-page user url title showtext text toolong*)
     (and blank.url blank.text)
      : (let dummy 34
          (submit-page user url title showtext text bothblank*))
     (let site sitename.url
       (or big-spamsites*.site recent-spam.site))
      : (msgpage user spammage*)
     (oversubmitting user ip 'story url)
      : (msgpage user toofast*)
     : (let s (create-story url process-title.title text user ip)
         (story-ban-test user s ip url)
         (when ignored.user (kill s 'ignored))
         (submit-item user s)
         (maybe-ban-ip s)
         "newest"))

[2] http://arclanguage.org/item?id=16495

Basically IDE formatting should be outside of the actual code formatting allowing people to format code how they see fit. Some are going to like to see the code the "standards" way and that's fine; Many of us will not.

@tmoertel's point is a prime example of this, as the only relationship I personally see in the aligned code is that they are all variables. His perceived parallelism was not present in my personal view of that same code snippet. Now for me white-space denotes parallelism more poignantly than alignment.

  var  x                  = shape.left(),
         y                  = shape.right(),