This is why setting an arbitrarily short max line length matters. And consequently why auto-formatters suck.
A short line length, while yes imperfect, forces complex lines to be decomposed into individual concepts. And it allows the code to read like a book rather than <there is literally no other media format that you read sideways>. Ultra-wide monitors be damned.
And auto-formatters suck because they don’t split concepts onto individual lines. They can’t. They just mangle code and scrunch it into whatever space is allowed without regard to how the code reads. The idea of them is great and intensely alluring, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. If an auto-formatter could make my code look and read like a LaTeX document, I’d shut up already.
So if you want people to implicitly start structuring their code as advised in this post, set a 80 or 100 char line length. And adopt a fuzzy “one statement per line” philosophy.
Agreed, auto-formatters have the single purpose of making code on screen visually more readable for humans, but seem to not consider that humans are not machines.
There is no regard for "visual code density", no attempt to use vertical alignment to highlight similarities and differences between consecutive lines.
To be fair considering such visual details is a complex task and probably hell to implement.
A short line length, while yes imperfect, forces complex lines to be decomposed into individual concepts. And it allows the code to read like a book rather than <there is literally no other media format that you read sideways>. Ultra-wide monitors be damned.
And auto-formatters suck because they don’t split concepts onto individual lines. They can’t. They just mangle code and scrunch it into whatever space is allowed without regard to how the code reads. The idea of them is great and intensely alluring, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. If an auto-formatter could make my code look and read like a LaTeX document, I’d shut up already.
So if you want people to implicitly start structuring their code as advised in this post, set a 80 or 100 char line length. And adopt a fuzzy “one statement per line” philosophy.