Issues of typography
A program is a sort of publication.
It's meant to be read by the programmer,
another programmer (perhaps yourself a few days, weeks or years later),
and lastly a machine.
The machine doesn't care how pretty the program is --
if the program compiles, the machine's happy --
but people do, and they should.
Sometimes they care too much: pretty printers
mechanically produce pretty output that accentuates irrelevant detail in
the program, which is
as
sensible
as
putting all the prepositions
in
English text
in
bold font.
Although many people think programs should look like the Algol-68 report
(and some systems even require you to edit programs in that style),
a clear program is not made any clearer by such presentation,
and a bad program is only made laughable.
Typographic conventions consistently held
are important to clear presentation, of course --
indentation is probably the best known and most useful example --
but when the ink obscures the intent, typography has taken over.
So even if you stick with plain old typewriter-like output, be conscious
of typographic silliness.
Avoid decoration; for instance,
keep comments brief and banner-free.
Say what you want to say in the program, neatly and consistently.
Then move on.
Contents
Introduction
Variable names