Proposal4: Show := on fileout / pretty print

Karl Goiser Lists at TassieMade.com.au
Mon Jun 5 00:15:40 UTC 2000


Hello,


>Coopers and Peters published a commercial product for VST called Edit.

I think it was called edIt or EdIt or something like that...

>It did exactly this.  I used it for a while and found it to be very
>useful.  I got to look at anybody's code in MY style.  It used an
>external DLL to parse each method as you entered a code pane and then
>formatted it according to your style rules.  It was very, very slick.

I agree.  It was a _fantastic_ piece of software.  A few years ago I 
worked in conjunction with 3-4 others doing Visual Smalltalk 
programming and we used to spend lots of time arguing the point about 
this or that layout.  Even when we decided on a format one of us 
would (accidentally?) not comply here or there.

I got EdIt in and the discussions stopped overnight - allowing us to 
spend the time saved developing!

I didn't customise the formatting for myself because the default was 
very reasonable.

I have a theory about this:  :-)

When you read code, comprehension is faster if its graphical 
structure is consistent with your expectations - what you are used 
to.  Obversely, if you read code that is inconsistent with the way 
you are used to reading it, comprehension is much slower.  It's like 
English books with chapters, Paragraphs and sentences that begin with 
capital letters - they all aid in speed of comprehension.

To my mind, it doesn't matter what the actual format of the code is, 
as long as it is consistent (actually, I guess it has to be fairly 
reasonable).  Even if you don't like the way a pretty printer formats 
your code, if you get used to it, you will find it really speeds your 
comprehension.

It's a bit like Smalltalk itself, once you get used to a pretty 
printer, it's hard to go back!


>It looks like they are now part of MS.

Sucked into the black hole!!  What a shame.


Karl





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