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From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2024 08:20:37 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 00:25:45 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> It=E2=80=99s like, I don=E2=80=99t know ... you=E2=80=99re trying to save=
 space. Why?
>=20
> It=E2=80=99s like programming inside an apartment block, instead of havin=
g a=20
> bungalow with a yard of your own.

It's a matter of balance. Needlessly crunching things to fit onto a
single line is hard to read, yes - but compulsively indenting and
splitting across lines can get out of hand, too. It seems to me that a
lot of people in this age of "cinematic" aspect ratios and super-sized
displays in personal computing forget that eye-travel isn't free, and
spreading information across maximal space can make it *harder* to keep
track of context.

Better, IMHO, to group operations in a way that logically reflects the
structure of the program, to whatever extent that *A.* is syntactically
feasible in $LANGUAGE, and *B.* doesn't crowd things to the point of
hampering basic readability.

(Of course, whether or not the ternary operator is fundamentally
confusing is an entirely separate question.)