[Baypiggies] padding variable assignments, why is it bad?

[Wai Yip Tung]

I definitely place high priority to keep the code readable than to keep 
the source control history neat. Lot more time and people will be 
reading code than researching the source code history. Overly obsess 
about source history hygiene may not be the best thing.

Wai Yip

> Kalb, Jon <mailto:jonkalb at a9.com>
> Friday, August 10, 2012 12:13 PM
> Imagine that I'm trying to do research in the source code repository 
> on how, when, and who modified "last_access." I see that a change was 
> made to the the last line in your example, but after wasting some of 
> my time investigating it, I discover that the only reason the line was 
> touched was because a new member with a long name was added and that 
> caused this line to be touched to change its white space.
>
> Treating lines of code independently has important advantages when 
> "diff"ing and tracing changes throw source code repositories.
>
> From: Wai Yip Tung <tungwaiyip at yahoo.com <mailto:tungwaiyip at yahoo.com>>
> Date: Friday, August 10, 2012 12:01 PM
> To: "baypiggies at python.org <mailto:baypiggies at python.org>" 
> <baypiggies at python.org <mailto:baypiggies at python.org>>
> Subject: Re: [Baypiggies] padding variable assignments, why is it bad?
>
> Imagine your have some code like this
>
> row.name = encode(src.get('name'), 'xmlref')
> row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
> row.enabled = encode(src.get('enabled'), 'xmlref')
> row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
>
> This looks a mumbo jumbo lines of code.
>
> However by aligning them into columns, the pattern become immediately 
> obvious.
>
> row.name        = encode(src.get('name'),        'xmlref')
> row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
> row.enabled     = encode(src.get('enabled'),     'xmlref')
> row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
>
> It is clear that the code is applying similar operation on 4 items. It 
> is a lot easier to tell which of the 4 elements and if you should 
> include more or less into the list. It is a huge visualization 
> improvement. PEP-8's suggestion on this is not a good one in my opinion.
>
> The down side is it takes some effort to keep it neat and tidy. Of 
> course I have editor macro that does that. I think every decent text 
> editor should have some function to help people to align things.
>
> Wai Yip
>
>
>
>
> Wai Yip Tung <mailto:tungwaiyip at yahoo.com>
> Friday, August 10, 2012 12:01 PM
> Imagine your have some code like this
>
> row.name = encode(src.get('name'), 'xmlref')
> row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
> row.enabled = encode(src.get('enabled'), 'xmlref')
> row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
>
> This looks a mumbo jumbo lines of code.
>
> However by aligning them into columns, the pattern become immediately 
> obvious.
>
> row.name        = encode(src.get('name'),        'xmlref')
> row.description = encode(src.get('description'), 'xmlref')
> row.enabled     = encode(src.get('enabled'),     'xmlref')
> row.last_access = encode(src.get('last_access'), 'xmlref')
>
> It is clear that the code is applying similar operation on 4 items. It 
> is a lot easier to tell which of the 4 elements and if you should 
> include more or less into the list. It is a huge visualization 
> improvement. PEP-8's suggestion on this is not a good one in my opinion.
>
> The down side is it takes some effort to keep it neat and tidy. Of 
> course I have editor macro that does that. I think every decent text 
> editor should have some function to help people to align things.
>
> Wai Yip
>
>
>
>
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