Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ulysses!ggs From: ggs@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Proposal for a scientific look at C style choices Summary: left-brain vs. right-brain maybe? Message-ID: <11091@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> Date: 12 Jan 89 16:36:00 GMT References: <132@mole-end.UUCP> <1045@ns.UUCP> <1066@ns.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 61 In article <1066@ns.UUCP>, ddb@ns.UUCP (David Dyer-Bennet) writes: > In article <138@mole-end.UUCP> mat@mole-end.UUCP (Mark A Terribile) writes: > :> > :Do you *really* want to bury the conjuntive/disjuntive operators at the > :end or in the middle of the line? > > Yes, definitely. For the same reason you want to put them elsewhere: more > readable. I dislike leaving a line-end that looks like a statement end > (not being good at parsing ";" mentally), so I try to end a continued > expression line with an operator. I'm using this as an excuse to suggest a theory: two kinds of people are arguing, and they have different perceptual strengths. Mark Terribile and I seem to be in the `visual' camp. I `understand' patterns, but grammar doesn't make much sense to me. A program is not `readable' to me; it is a two-dimensional array of meta-symbols that I organize visually. The example that I deleted makes best sense to me when displayed as if ( mumble && mumble && mumble && mumble ) { mumble; mumble; } I can then extract the if ( && && && { as a single icon and know what it does, at that level of abstraction. David Dyer-Bennet seems to be a member of the `parsing' school. These people like to `read' code instead of `seeing' it. I won't explain their perceptions, because I can't empathise with them. They make life miserable for me, however. When they format similar code, it's something like if (whatever && something_else && something_on_the_next_line && something_short && something_longer && the_end_of_the_list) { mumble; } This style maximizes my confusion by forcing me to `find' all the component markers instead of `seeing' them. I have lost most of the visual cues, and I have to go wading through the code with my defective parser. I suspect the `parsers' are equally disturbed by having to discard my superfluous white-space. I don't have any solutions. I do wish the two sides would be more sympathetic to each other's problems. -- Griff Smith AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill Phone: 1-201-582-7736 UUCP: {most AT&T sites}!ulysses!ggs Internet: ggs@ulysses.att.com