Indent! Indent!

Chris Torek chris at mimsy.UUCP
Fri Jan 6 12:19:53 AEST 1989


In article <293 at twwells.uucp> bill at twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) writes:
>... you, hopefully, are smarter, and can figure out what is going on
>from the indentation.  Hell, that isn't even your conscious mind doing
>the job, just your subconscious.

Actually, it is a collection of dedicated-purpose cells in the visual
cortex, whose job is to find vertical lines in the visual field.

The amount of hardwired visual information processing in the brain is
rather astounding.  Since those cells *are* permanently dedicated to
their tasks, indentation recognition is virtually free---which is why
you should use some consistent form of indentation.  (`Virtually'
because you must use softwired cells to translate `line' to `statement
group'.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris



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