Thanks for the comment! I’m glad that you enjoy my post.

I don’t put line breaks between every line. If I had more code, it would look something like this:

<?php

	if( $someCondition == true ) {

		doSomething();

		if( $otherCondition == true ) {

			doSomethingElse( $someVariable );
			doSomething( $someVariable );

		} else {

			doSomethingElse( $otherVariable );
			doSomething( $someVariable );

		}

	}

?>

I use the line breaks to break things up and make it easier to see where blocks of code in the conditional statement start and end.

I can see what you guys are saying about having too much whitespace, though. When I made that example I wasn’t really thinking. I’m going to update it to display what I think more accurately.

I was trying to convince programmers that don’t use whitespace to use whitespace, not programmers that do use whitespace to use more of it. I use many line breaks on my personal projects since it find that it works best for me, but if I was working on a project with others I would obvious opt to use whatever other members of the group choose to use.

I’ll update my examples and put an explanation thanking you guys. Thanks for your comments!

@dk

I’ll check that out too!

But, to be honest, I find your whitespace example pretty horrific. The first example is easier to read, not the second. A blank line indicates a break on concepts, like the breaks between two paragraphs in a book. Adding extraneous blank lines like that just makes it seem like nothing is a complete thought in the code. It feels fractured. What do you do between “chunks” of code, put 3 or 4 blank lines?

And, if you’re a brace on EOL kind of guy, why have a blank line afterwards? The main point I’ve ever heard for EOL braces is saving space. I’m a brace on the next line guy for because I find the visual brace matchup helpful, but I understand the EOL guy’s point about saving space. It might not match how my brain parses the text on screen, but I get why they like EOL braces. Your style is the worst of both worlds: no space is saved AND branches don’t match up.

You can use it to break up if blocks, but doing using it for every other line is just too much. There’s no sense of coherency in the code.

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll check it out.

@Kaiser

That is true. Not all languages have strict standards, though. This was focused on PHP which pretty much let’s you do what you want.