xanthian@saturn.ADS.COM (Metafont Consultant Account) (02/21/90)
In article <1990Feb20.235034.21698@Neon.Stanford.EDU> rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes: [...] >Make two copies of the same program, one printed with tgrind/WEB/ >whatever, and one just printed out with a monospaced font. Now try >and read each. Which do you really find easier to read? > >The rapid font changes (bold keywords, italic identifiers, etc.) >in the output of such programs as tgrind manage to slow my >comprehension of the code, by just making it a lot more difficult >to read. [...] Amen. The same thing makes me hate the forced uppercasing of keywords in Modula-2. It may be easier for Wirth to read, but it makes me go blind. From my point of view, keywords are punctuation, and should be as subdued as possible, so I can get right to identifiers, the "value added" part of the code. With proper coding style, most keywords are at the start of a line anyway (including C's "{", "}" pair, sorry K&R), and the few that aren't are forecast by others that are (for .... to .. by ... do) so why EMPHASIZE them to the detriment of readability? -- xanthian@ads.com xanthian@well.sf.ca.us (Kent Paul Dolan) Again, my opinions, not the account furnishers'.
paj@mrcu (Paul Johnson) (02/28/90)
In article <1990Feb20.235034.21698@Neon.Stanford.EDU> rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes: [...] >Make two copies of the same program, one printed with tgrind/WEB/ >whatever, and one just printed out with a monospaced font. Now try >and read each. Which do you really find easier to read? > >The rapid font changes (bold keywords, italic identifiers, etc.) >in the output of such programs as tgrind manage to slow my >comprehension of the code, by just making it a lot more difficult >to read. ..... Interesting. I guess this is the best group around to discuss this matter, so.... Does this mean that grinders should emphasise VARIABLE and TYPE names? I would imagine that the emphasise-keyword tradition dates back to ALGOL, and (qwerty strikes again) was introduced then because it seemed like a good idea. Have any objective tests been done on code comprehension with different emphasis styles (I doubt it, its a bit obscure and difficult to measure, but you never know). On the other hand, could it be more a matter of what you are used to? I have been involved in minor flame wars at work over indentation style: everyone seems to find everyone elses style incomprehensible. We are all used to no emphasis (as on terminal screens) so seeing parts of text emphasised might be off-putting no matter how it is done. Paul. -- Paul Johnson UUCP: <world>!mcvax!ukc!gec-mrc!paj --------------------------------!-------------------------|------------------- GEC-Marconi Research is not | Telex: 995016 GECRES G | Tel: +44 245 73331 responsible for my opinions. | Inet: paj@uk.co.gec-mrc | Fax: +44 245 75244