What’s the Big Deal?
The layout and presentation of code is an issue in most modern programming languages. The freedom of formatting that permits individual artistic expression came en vogue in the early 1960s with the language Algol; the previously available Fortran versions had been more restricted in format. Since then, very few languages have deviated from that free-form approach.
A code presentation style governs a surprisingly large number of things; brace
positioning is the most obvious[1] and perhaps the most contentious issue. The wider aspects of code
style, like conventions for function and variable naming, tie in with other
coding concerns such as program structure (e.g.,Don’t use
gotos, or Only write Single Entry, Single Exit functions ...
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