Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 23:24:56 -0800 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: C coding editor Message-ID: <200302272324.56873.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <3E5D0008.20009@mitre.org> References: <20030221122103.GA2073@asterix.local> <200302260841.40693.wes@softweyr.com> <3E5D0008.20009@mitre.org>
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On Wednesday 26 February 2003 09:57 am, Jason Andresen wrote:
> Wes Peters wrote:
>
> > Seriously, limiting your programming for a lifetime to 80 columns
> > because you couldn't figure out how to make some grotty old dot
> > matrix printer do 8-point printing a decade ago really isn't all
> > that smart, is it?
>
> Even if I never have to print out on a printer like that, who's to
> say nobody else is? You will no doubt turn people away if they open
> up your code in their favorite programming editor and all of the
> lines wrap a few characters. Worse if they are already at the
> maximum size their screen/eyeballs can support.
I rejected programming to the least common denominator in equipment.
You should try it too, it's incredibly liberating. The legions of
programmers under the age of 25 holding up 80x25 "consoles" as some
sort of mantra is just weird, and the idea of cramming a video card
capable of a million 3d triangles per second into a machine so some
dumbass can use it as a vt220 just makes me roll on the floor. Of
course you probably didn't live through paying $75,000 for workstations
with a tenth that 3D performance.
> > I'm still disappointed at programming editors that can't make sense
> > of normal typefaces and have to be used with monospaced fonts.
> > Same for email, but that's a different argument.
>
> I find that monospace fonts are quite nice in programming on occasion
> when you want to line up output or just nicely format blocks of text.
My code almost never lines up output for formats blocks of text. For
some odd reason, the program on the other end of the socket doesn't
really care what my source code looks like, so I make it readable and
understandable by using horizontal and vertical whitespace in ways that
separate the code into small, visually recognizable chunks that
implement a single idea at a time.
> What about when someone opens up your project with a different font
> and all of the comments and blocks of code are all scattered across
> the screen in some haphazard looking mess?
I use what is mostly likely a different font from what you use for
coding every day. I do all of my coding on FreeBSD, most of it in
Emacs, and use lucidatypewriter (less and less) or luxi mono for most
of it. My own code often goes as wide as 120 characters because
anything more than that won't fit comfortably on a 1024 pixel wide
screen, which is a much better default than 80 columns these days.
> Visual distinctiveness
> and effective use of whitespace can be invaluble in helping people
> understand your code (or understanding other people's code). That's
> why people have settled on a format they can reproduce in almost all
> instances. Very few compilers accept code with formatting markup
> beyond ^Ls and TABs. You can't compile a Word document.
No, but your editor really ought to be able to interpret tab stops
correctly at like 0.5 in increments. Code editors on the Mac have
been doing this for years.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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