Re: goto vs. return?

[LachlanA]

John W. Eaton wrote
> On 01/25/2016 01:26 AM, al davis wrote:
>> On Sun, 24 Jan 2016 07:55:49 -0800
>> Rik <

> rik@

> > wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think much of goto, but I do accept intermediate returns as a
>>> valid
>>> style.  What I dislike is the Arrow coding style
>>> (http://blog.codinghorror.com/flattening-arrow-code/) of which there is
>>> a
>>> lot.  Early returns, a.k.a guard statements, are one way of reducing
>>> massive indentation.  One versus multiple returns seems to be something
>>> that programmer's like to debate.
>>
>> I think the real answer is to understand what you are trying to
>> accomplish, then express it as clearly as you can.
>>
>> It looks a lot worse with that curly-brace style.
>> Once-upon-a-time, Gnucap did use that style, but I changed it to put
>> the curlys on the "if" line.
>>
>> Also, the way "else if" is written there adds several lines.
>>
>> Also ..  I like to make the empty else explicit, and always use curlys.
>>
>> Changing these things alone makes it look a lot better:
> 
> Better to you, perhaps.  I don't think there is anything universal about 
> what looks better and what doesn't.  "Use some freaking whitespace, 
> dude!" is my reaction to the code snippet you posted.  Also, it looks 
> bad to sometimes have whitespace before/after the curly brace and 
> sometimes not.  Is that intentional?  I also find it harder to read 
> things when code is all smashed together.  But maybe the way I view code 
> is different from you?  I sometimes read without syntax highlighting and 
> in black an white.
> 
> jwe

The Octave style has grown on me, but when I first saw it, I thought there
was too much white space.  I usually work on a notebook, and want to see a
reasonable amount of code at once.  When I look at code with essentially a
blank line on every second line, I think "why not use a font that has the
whole glyph in the bottom half of the character?".  The benefit of a style
that doesn't force much white space is that white space is much more
effective for demarcation.

I have read that real programmers don't care what style is used as long as
it is consistent, but if there were ever a vote, I'd vote for a more compact
style (with the exception of space to line up almost identical text on
consecutive lines; I find that makes it much easier to spot the
differences).

Cheers,
Lachlan



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