If I had to choose between 2 screens full of source code with lots of whitespace, or half of a screen condensed, I'd always choose the variant that fits on my screen.

So my personal preference is strongly against airy and more like "cram what you can into one line".

But given the quick downvotes to my parent post, it seems I'm in the minority with my view that source code should be first and foremost useful.

>cram what you can into one line

This is how code gets thrown away and rewritten. Fixing bugs in dense code is a nightmare, if the code was written by someone else.

It is quite possible that people agree with you that source code should be first and foremost useful, but disagree on compactness vs airiness.