Code Layout Matters

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An infeasible number of years ago I worked on a Cobol system where staff weren't allowed to change the indentation unless they already had a functional reason to change the code. Presumably, this was because someone once broke something by letting a line slip into the special columns at the beginning of the line. Unfortunately, this applied even if the layout was misleading, which it sometimes was, so we had to tread very carefully when reading the code because we couldn't trust it. The policy must have cost a fortune in slowed development.