this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
458 points (92.4% liked)
Programmer Humor
32068 readers
443 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why is multiple levels of indentation bad?
IDK, but if the reason is "to break stuff into multiple functions", then I'm not necessarily writing yet another single-use function just to avoid writing a comment, especially in time critical applications. Did that with a text parser that could get text formatting from a specifically written XML file, but mainly due to it being way less time critical, and had a lot of reused code via templates.
It's important to remember that Linus is primarily writing about C code formatting. C doesn't have things that tend to create more deeply nested structures, such as a formal class syntax, or nested functions.
Going too deep is still bad--as zea notes, it's an indication of control structures run amok--but the exact number is dependent on the language and the context.
And you never include the switch-case-block indentation levels.