As much as they are hated by some, there's empirical data indirectly suggesting that using curly braces for scoping might lead to less mistakes when reading code:
> Similarly, the twospaces version of counting demonstrated that vertical space is more important then indentation to programmers when judging whether or not statements belong to the same loop body. Programmers often group blocks of related statements together using vertical white space, but our results indicate that this seemingly superficial space can cause even experienced programmers to internalize the wrong program.
Of course, whether or not curly braces significantly help in this situation would require another experiment. Anecdotally though, I do feel like it requires less mental effort to structure code that I'm reading.
Comments
As much as they are hated by some, there's empirical data indirectly suggesting that using curly braces for scoping might lead to less mistakes when reading code:
> Similarly, the twospaces version of counting demonstrated that vertical space is more important then indentation to programmers when judging whether or not statements belong to the same loop body. Programmers often group blocks of related statements together using vertical white space, but our results indicate that this seemingly superficial space can cause even experienced programmers to internalize the wrong program.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.5257
Of course, whether or not curly braces significantly help in this situation would require another experiment. Anecdotally though, I do feel like it requires less mental effort to structure code that I'm reading.