Semantic Line Breaks
This is the first lightning talk topic given out in my Junior Education Academy ( J.E.A ) journey at DiscoLabs. I thought it might be a good idea to document these:
- “A” for myself looking back
- “B” that they might prove somewhat useful and maybe the Google search algorithm might find them, and collate them from the backwaters of the internet
- “C” people might look back in 15 years time and think its a bit weird that real people actually used to do programming at all..
Semantic Line Breaks
Semantic Line Breaks describe a set of conventions for using insensitive vertical white space to structure prose along semantic boundaries.
Semantic Line What Now ..? After reaching for Doctor Google Semantic Line Breaks ( S.L.B)’s can be summarised as giving form and feeling to an otherwise SLAB of text ‘breaking’ up the otherwise endless stream of words into topical thoughts and a structure, in the instance where white space allows a natural resting point for the text to be absorbed by the reader. The overall message conveyed by the text can not be changed through the allocation of a S.L.B though in the process at it’s essence.
So in reference to above we could re-present the above SLAB in the below style.
Semantic Line What Now ..?
After reaching for Doctor Google, Semantic Line Breaks ( S.L.B)’s can be summarised as giving form and feeling to an otherwise SLAB of text ‘breaking’ up the otherwise endless stream of words into topical thoughts and a structure,
in the instance where white space allows a natural resting point for the text to be absorbed by the reader.
The overall message conveyed by the text can not be changed through the allocation of a S.L.B though in the process at it’s essence.
Great, that’s way more readable for me, but how’s S.L.B’s going to help me live my best programmer lyfe..
We S.LB’s are incorporated into most markup languages, this post is written Markdown and similar to HTML in that Line Breaks are designated through the use of <br>, example below
> *Semantic Line What Now ..?*<br>After reaching for Doctor Google Semantic Line Breaks ( S.L.B)'s can be summarised as giving form and feeling to an otherwise **SLAB** of text 'breaking' up the otherwise endless stream of words into topical
The <br> instantiates the S.L.B onto the page giving an empty space on the rendered page, markup languages have always needed a way regulate how readers present text onto the page.
This is a Ruby blog right.. where is the Ruby bit..? Well yes we are getting to that.
Semantic Line Breaks & Ruby
If you come out of a Ruby boot-camp like I did ( shout-out lewagon batch #466 ), then sooner or later your rubbish fledgling code runs head first into the brick wall that is Rubocop
Rubocop serves to protect the rest of the Ruby world from your code and enforce the Ruby Style Guide at all costs. You’ll soon find yourself in a world were you can pass any exercises unless you do the Rubocop’s ( or linters ) bidding and tidy up your code from bad => good.
As you can see below S.L.B’s matter in programming they make your code:
- more readable for you, and others grouped with you
- easier to maintain going forward
- chances are the code will make more sense to YOU went you stubble across it again in a few months, or need to debug the code
Looking at the example below we can easily see that the bad code gives no spacing and appears “busy”, and imagine doom scrolling through 1000+ lines of bunched up code looking for and elusive bug. The good code utilises S.L.B’s to free up space and created a far more coherent reader experience.
# Empty Lines between Methods
# bad
def some_method
data = initialize(options)
data.manipulate!
data.result
end
def some_other_method
result
end
# good
def some_method
data = initialize(options)
data.manipulate!
data.result
end
def some_other_method
result
end
So don’t be afraid to give yourself, and your code some space.. s to .max your developer experience, and keep Rubocop at bay.
See you soon @ the next post.
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