Re:Software engineering topics I changed my mind on
by naikrovek on Saturday January 23, 2021 @09:21PM
(#25888389)
I think some people just have better or worse tolerances to these things than others.
If formatting in code is as I am used to it, I can skim it very quickly. If it is not, I have to focus much more, and that adds up over the course of a day.
My brain can just recognize what's happening in a small block of code if it has a particular shape and colors. I don't know how to explain it better than that.
This is one reason I REALLY want to see editors save files as tokens rather than plain text, and see compilers ingest code as pre-parsed tokens rather than plain text. (Or have editors save the tokenized file alongside a plain text file for the compiler.)
If that ever happens, I will be able to view the code exactly as I like it, and so will everyone else, even when we each want to view it differently.
Compilers and diffing tools will need to report a token number rather than a line number for errors and differences, and I don't see that as a big problem at all.
If formatting in code is as I am used to it, I can skim it very quickly. If it is not, I have to focus much more, and that adds up over the course of a day.
My brain can just recognize what's happening in a small block of code if it has a particular shape and colors. I don't know how to explain it better than that.
This is one reason I REALLY want to see editors save files as tokens rather than plain text, and see compilers ingest code as pre-parsed tokens rather than plain text. (Or have editors save the tokenized file alongside a plain text file for the compiler.)
If that ever happens, I will be able to view the code exactly as I like it, and so will everyone else, even when we each want to view it differently.
Compilers and diffing tools will need to report a token number rather than a line number for errors and differences, and I don't see that as a big problem at all.