Raif wrote:
Why change to hanging brace, out of curiosity? I've always viewed it as a throwback to when screen space was limited.
Me too. I changed to hanging brace for a pretty silly reason: When I switched to linux, I started using emacs... and I couldn't figure out how to get emacs to indent code properly with newline braces. Emacs really,
really wants you to use hanging braces. I could not for the life of me get the indent functions working properly, and I finally decided to just do it the way emacs liked and come back to it later.
Once I'd been using it for a few days, however, I decided I liked it better, even with today's larger displays.
Raif wrote:
I tend to find less code density makes it easier to read, possibly for the same reason that double-spaced text is easier to read.
Well, that's actually it's own best counterexample. For me, double-spacing a document doesn't make it any more readable, but it does make it harder to skim because there's less information on the page. Good use of paragraphs, indentation, and a clear writing style have a far greater effect for me than line spacing.
I hit a point a few years ago when I stopped thinking in lines of code and started thinking in blocks of code. Now anything that spreads out the code only serves to put less code on the screen at one time, which cripples my understanding. The logical unit of code that my brain likes to work with visually is currently about 50-80 lines of code. But if I can't see it--even if it's scrolled off by
one measly line--I lose that immediate visual grasp. Hanging brace puts about 30% more code on the screen.