Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:59:18 -0400
Reply-To: David Marso <david.marso@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: David Marso <david.marso@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Auto indent syntax option
Why Thank You Art,
I find the ability to visually detect the structural and logical flow of a
program to be an essential quality of well written code. I have been using
Visual Basic since 1997 and SPSS since the mid 80's. A few months ago I
began porting some of my VB6 applications to VB.Net and I was absolutely
delighted to discover that indentation of code is enforced automatically by
the program.
Type the beginning clause of a structural element (For, With Select Case ...
and enter and it will automatically complete the structure.
It also does this consistently for all nested elements.
For years I used to type FOR I=blah to blah, hit Enter and Next I, then back
up to enter my code..
I pretty much align everything as I go. Same with SPSS. It takes less time
to add these visual cues while writing the program than to try to figure out
whether all your LOOPS, DO IF , DO REPEAT etc are all aligned.
When you go back to code later you can either scratch your head muttering
WTF for half an hour or jump right in and continue where you left off.
David
> David is an extremely skilled programmer and seemingly still finds
> the vertical alignment useful despite years of experience as an
> expert programmer. The editor should make it easy to produce syntax
> that follows good programming practices. That way even beginners
> can produce the readable code that communicates to people as well as
> to the machine.<br>
> <br>
> Art Kendall<br>
>
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