I have found bugs in code even from experienced programmers that
boiled down to a incorrect usage of an if block which would not have
happened with braces.

That's why I insist on using it, and insist on it from my coworkers.
When used uniformly your brain learns to recognize braces as block
delimiters so I don't think it leads to cluttered code.

And I promise that's the last I'll say on this thread about
formatting.  If there's more stuff about JavaFX - like the null stuff
and the sequence stuff that I commented on yesterday, I'll respond to
that.

-- Tor

On Sep 9, 7:32 pm, Ryan Waterer <[email protected]> wrote:
> While experienced programmers might not worry about the braces on a single
> line, they become invaluable to any junior programmers.  I've trained a few
> in which they couldn't understand why the following code segment simply
> stopped working.  (Let's not even start a discussion about
> System.out.println as a valid debugging tool, ok?   This is just an example
> of a n00blet mistake )
>
> for (int y = 0; y < lines; y++)
>    for (int x = 0; x < columns; x++)
>       System.out.println("The sum is: " + sum);
>        sum += cells[y][x];
>
> I agree that the braces add a bit of "clutter" to the visual look and feel
> of code.  However,  I feel that it helps with the overall maintainability of
> the code and therefore, I disregard the way that it looks.
>
> --Ryan
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:24 PM, Jess Holle <[email protected]> wrote:
> >  I'll agree on the newlines and indents, but the braces are silly.
>
> > One might debate the extra whitespace inside the ()'s, but I find it more
> > readable with the whitespace -- to each his/her own in that regard.
>
> > TorNorbye wrote:
>
> > On Sep 9, 5:27 pm, Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]> 
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >  Here's a line from my code:
>
> > for ( int y = 0 ; x < lines ; y++ ) for ( int x = 0 ; x < columns ; x+
> > + ) sum += cells[y][x];
>
> >  I guess that's where we disagree.
>
> > for (int y = 0; y < lines; y++) {
> >     for (int x = 0; x < columns; x++) {
> >         sum += cells[y][x];
> >     }
> > }
>
> > is IMHO better because:
> > (a) I can see immediately that I'm dealing with a nested construct
> > here, and that's it's O(n^2)
> > (b) I can more easily set breakpoints on individual statements of this
> > code while debugging - and similarly other "line oriented" operations
> > (like quickfixes etc) get more cluttery when it's all on one line.
> > Profiling data / statement counts / code coverage highlighting for the
> > line is also trickier when you mash multiple statements into one line.
> > (c) I think it's less likely that I would have made the "x < lines"
> > error that was in your code when typing it this way because the
> > handling of y and x were done separately on separate lines (though
> > this is a bit speculative)
> > (d) I removed your spaces inside the parentheses, because they are
> > Bad! Bad!
>
> > (Ok c and d are padding)
>
> > I am -not- looking to minimize the number of lines needed to express
> > code.  If I wanted that, I'd be coding in Perl.  I deliberately add
> > newlines to make the code more airy and to group logical operations
> > together. I always insert a newline before the final return-statement
> > from a function etc.
>
> > I think the extra vertical space you've gained, which arguably could
> > help you orient yourself in your code by showing more of the
> > surrounding context, is lost because the code itself is denser and
> > more difficult to visually scan.
>
> > Oh no, a formatting flamewar -- what have I gotten myself into?
>
> > -- Tor
>
> > P.S. No tabs!
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