[Baypiggies] padding variable assignments, why is it bad?

[Duncan McGreggor]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 2:52 PM, David Berthelot
<david.berthelot at gmail.com>wrote:

> So far I only read 1 pro, 1 con:
> pro: readability (aligned variables make it clear)
> con: vcs history can get confusing when looking for who changed a line
>
> So may be it's time for vcs tools to evolve and become language aware.
> Readability was historically pythonic otherwise why rely on
> indentation instead of curly braces ?
>


But readability means different things to different people. Python is
highly readable for me due to the initial white space for indented code
blocks.

Reading                        something                            like
                     this                     is not              highly
               readable  for      me.

Though I could certainly imagine that it would be for some folks...
different tastes and all that.

Code blocks help define scope visually. Column-aligned code does not serve
the same purpose. When I read a list of variables, I get no additional
information from the spacing of them. I also don't read variables
vertically. I read them like I do English, from left to right. Large gaps
of white space between the "words" is much less readable *for me* ;-)

d


>
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Duncan McGreggor
> <oubiwann at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Wai Yip Tung <tungwaiyip at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Imagine your have some code like this
> >>
> >> row.name = encode(src.get('name'), 'xmlref')
> >> row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
> >> row.enabled = encode(src.get('enabled'), 'xmlref')
> >> row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
> >>
> >> This looks a mumbo jumbo lines of code.
> >>
> >> However by aligning them into columns, the pattern become immediately
> >> obvious.
> >>
> >> row.name        = encode(src.get('name'),        'xmlref')
> >> row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
> >> row.enabled     = encode(src.get('enabled'),     'xmlref')
> >> row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
> >>
> >> It is clear that the code is applying similar operation on 4 items. It
> is
> >> a lot easier to tell which of the 4 elements and if you should include
> more
> >> or less into the list. It is a huge visualization improvement. PEP-8's
> >> suggestion on this is not a good one in my opinion.
> >>
> >> The down side is it takes some effort to keep it neat and tidy. Of
> course
> >> I have editor macro that does that. I think every decent text editor
> should
> >> have some function to help people to align things.
> >>
> >> Wai Yip
> >>
> >
> > In addition to the other problems with this, you have another problem:
> > you've now got a separate coding standard for variables than you do for
> > other code blocks. White space in Python is syntactically meaningful
> > *initially* not in the middle or the end. You've just made it meaningful
> > (and dependent upon the length of the longest variable name) *medially*
> and
> > that's not Python.
> >
> > I actually find code that is column-aligned like that to be highly
> > distracting. I find regular, PEP-8 code to be much more highly readable.
> And
> > there was a time in the 90s when I was writing column aligned variables
> (for
> > a short while!). Readability at the level of white space is simply a
> matter
> > of getting used to (people that hate it enough usually don't end up using
> > Python, when given the choice).
> >
> > d
> >
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