Showerthought: I used to write code like a wall of text until a friend said it looked like a ransom note

Back when I was learning Python, I'd cram everything onto one line and never use spaces. A buddy looked at my script and said, 'Dude, this looks like a ransom note, I can't read it.' I mean, he was right. I started using line breaks and adding comments after that, and it made fixing my own mistakes way easier. Has anyone else gotten a piece of feedback that totally changed how you structure your code?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancy8203mo ago

My old boss actually preferred dense code, said it saved paper when printing. I still write pretty tight but add line breaks for my own sanity.

tarac1622d ago

Is poor formatting really that serious though? I mean yeah, comments help, but if someone can't read a few lines of code grouped together maybe the problem is them being dramatic. @nancy820's old boss had a point about paper, but honestly I'd rather just scroll than deal with five miles of vertical whitespace everywhere.

brooke4753mo ago

My first code review in college had the word "spaghetti" written in red pen three times. I started leaving a blank line between functions after that, it's like visual breathing room.