Date:         Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:42:56 -0400
Reply-To:     Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Subject:      Re: Auto indent syntax option
Comments: To: Art@DrKendall.org
Comments: cc: David Marso <david.marso@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <4C90D7FA.1010400@DrKendall.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 10:28 AM 9/15/2010, Art Kendall wrote:

>David [Marso] is an extremely skilled programmer and seemingly still
>finds the vertical alignment useful despite years of experience as
>an expert programmer.

Goodness, it's the skilled programmers who DO do it. And go to
various other lengths to make their code readable, like breaking
statements at logical points into lines of reasonable length, and
lining up corresponding clauses vertically. (Yeah, I'm compulsive
about that. My code is far from compact, but I *think* it reads well.)

Back in the GOOD OLD DAYS, Real Programmers like Mel(1) gloried in
understanding obscure code and obscure techniques that baffled
everybody else. "His code was not easy for someone else to modify."
It was fun, in its way, but once the code hit the limit even the Real
Programmer could understand, nobody could either fix it or extend it.

Not to speak of a Real Programmer who'd been away from the code for six weeks.
=============================
(1) http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html

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