I want to be clear that I think this style does indeed have merit, regardless of its origins. I like it--I prefer _reading_ and _comprehending_ code rather than superficially skimming code--I believe the style serves that goal wonderfully. I do not think that a thing adopted because of one's respect and adoration for an idol figure invalidates the value of the thing, _but_ I also think I spoke much too harshly and I recognize that people are allowed to like a thing and take it from another person without idolizing the creator.
However, I still believe the style originated with Arthur. Again, I don't think that's bad, and I agree with you that there is indeed some spirit of Iverson's work spread around different computing communities in the way they write C. Then again, _I_ did not have the presence of mind to spontaneously write Arthurian C without reading his code first and thinking really hard about it, so I am perhaps making the mistake that everyone else is similarly limited. I've tried to find independent exemplars of similar styles without success. Again, I write that down as a personal failing.
I've been fascinated by this style ever since I saw the "J Incunabulum." Unfortunately, it seems to come from idol worship. Arthur Whitney, the author of the K programming language(s) writes in this style, and so those who seek to emulate his achievements sometimes do as well.
Some of my complaints:
* true adherence to the source material requires one to dispense entirely with all but the tersest comments
* it over-aggressively tunes away whitespace (if you code like this, it's quite beautiful when you align comparable values on the same column between adjacent rows)
* many of the idioms rely on undefined behavior, which makes it very frustrating to maintain, port, and extend--to a lesser degree, it makes the code hard to follow, but usually (the most frustrating part of all!) is that the intent is _clear_, it's just that it doesn't work well with the C standard
* it emphasizes the placement of as many statements as possible on a single line, which is jarring when those statements don't flow together; on the other hand, the style is quite nice when you allow yourself to place complete and related concepts together, since it's clear that you're "doing something else" on subsequent lines
I said this is "unfortunate" not because I have any problem with Arthur, but because I actually wish this was part of a richer tradition of C (which I've never been able to confirm and thus came to my conclusion about idol worship). Although I happily abide by them in my professional life, I am thoroughly frustrated with coding standards that dictate variable names be complete sentence and code limited to 80 lines. I would love to adopt a rigorous style _based on_ Arthur's, although I will concede that this will probably never happen because the aesthetic of this practice conflicts so completely with the contemporary zeitgeist.
Anyway--nobody has to like it, but some people really actually do like it and accomplish work with it.
I want to be clear that I think this style does indeed have merit, regardless of its origins. I like it--I prefer _reading_ and _comprehending_ code rather than superficially skimming code--I believe the style serves that goal wonderfully. I do not think that a thing adopted because of one's respect and adoration for an idol figure invalidates the value of the thing, _but_ I also think I spoke much too harshly and I recognize that people are allowed to like a thing and take it from another person without idolizing the creator.
However, I still believe the style originated with Arthur. Again, I don't think that's bad, and I agree with you that there is indeed some spirit of Iverson's work spread around different computing communities in the way they write C. Then again, _I_ did not have the presence of mind to spontaneously write Arthurian C without reading his code first and thinking really hard about it, so I am perhaps making the mistake that everyone else is similarly limited. I've tried to find independent exemplars of similar styles without success. Again, I write that down as a personal failing.