Re: Postfixed characters ( was RPG, open source, and the web)

Henrik,

Mihael, you may think I'm crazy bringing in LEAN psycologist into
programming, but just notise the "commas"
that is set in the front instead of the back in the above code - the

human

brain processes these commas in a
rate 3 times faster than if it was in the end of the statement if the

code

is hirachical structured - in 10 statements
you cannot hardly measure the diffence - but programmers during years

has to

read million of statements and suddenly
the time to mind- mapp code makes a difference.

Is there a peer-reviewed study which says that we process these commas 3
times faster? Because in the absence of one, I'd have to disagree with
Barbara (gasp!) and say that I *don't* see intellectually that they are
better. Except in Dennis's great example.

Obviously we all read millions of lines of code in our lifetime, but it's
also true that, as long as we're reading code which conforms to our
preference (whether because it's a 'shop standard' or whatever), then it
doesn't really make any difference - if I am used to e.g. colons at the end
of a line, as in my original example, and all the code I read uses that
system, then there's really no problem. The problem only occurs if we have
to swap between different coding styles - at which point, whether we prefix
or suffix our commas is of minimal importance compared with e.g. whether the
code is upper-, lower- or mixed-case, whether consistent indentation is
used, whether standardized variable names are used etc.....

Rory

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I realize this is completely irrational, and that I should learn to
embrace leading commas. I see intellectually that they are better. But
brrrrrr, make them go away.