[swift-evolution] Source Formatting

[Ted F.A. van Gaalen]

In most IDE, like Eclipse, Netbeans etc. the formatting
is done by the IDE., It is NOT part the programming language *

The programmer has the option to customize how
the IDE should format the source. Mostly one
will adjust this as much as possible conforming
with the company standard way of working.
But there are exceptions: more about this further down
this text.

Formatting should not be part of the programming language itself,
except of course for obvious things, like unintentionally “glueing”
language elements together, which, of course, result
in compilation errors.

Also, there will always be sloppy programmers,
no matter how good formatting could perhaps be,
people will always find ways to create a fantastic mess.
but to accept this or not is the responsibility of the team 
he/she is in.   

So, Xcode, or for that matter any other IDE you might use, 
should have under “Preferences” the option to customize 
formatting behavior and also the option to disable formatting altogether .
Luckily, most IDEs provide this customization already. 
Why? 
Because no two humans are the same.

Even more Important: dyslexia disorder,
which is:  **
    " a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read 
       or interpret words, letters,  and other symbols, 
      but that do not affect general intelligence.”   
     "It is estimated that between 5-10% of the population has dyslexia, 
       but this number can also be as high as 17%.”

 Dyslexia is nearly always present in combination with autism.
 As you know, many programmers are more or less autistic. 
 Probably even more of them than in the average population. 

Forcing default formatting upon them (a lot of us) is obviously not a good idea! 

There are endless debates e.g. about using { }  
1.  
    func foo() {
  	 a = b
     }

or  2.      

    func foo()
    {
        a = b
    }

Personally I prefer 2. because
if I navigate through my source very quickly
my eyes don’t have to go to the end of each line
to find a starting { 
resulting, at least for me, in much faster editing. 
I am not very good with trailing tokens. 

also I prefer to align variables like this
var  a:            Double
var  boat:       Boat
var  weather: ClimateOption
etc.

Because I find that much easier to read
maybe autistic aspects of me.
(which btw also make communicating with other humans a bit difficult for me, you might have noticed that)
The strange thing is that, if formatted the way I prefer it,
I can read sources very fast..

So, formatting should definitely not be
be part of the programming language
which is in essence free-format, luckily.

Another note in this perspective is:
One should not treat programmers like little children
that need to be (over?)protected from themselves.

One can safely assume, that, if one has made 
it in being a good programmer, one obviously 
possesses a reasonable intelligence level.


TedvG

* (except perhaps for Python, albeit that the only requirement
with Python is indentation)
** source: Wikipedia