> We have a soft limit on class length of 100 lines, and I like the extra conciseness this allows.
The "compact" line format is something that is very information dense and really really hard to parse for a human's eye, compared to the clearly visually structured prior format.
Personally, if I'd see something like that outside of a code golf tournament, I'd run because that kind of code density means that at least one of the developer(s) believes themselves to be some kind of code wizard who loves Matrix-style display, and it means that new developers have a very steep learning curve ahead of them.
What can be good, but requires discipline, is to replace some of the syntax that's no longer needed with a comment to help explain the what and why and goal. You reduce or eliminate the line savings, but overall may increase the information and understanding of intent.
I do this commonly in the Perl I write. If I'm using a complex set of maps and greps to reorganize a structure, doing that inline can be useful to the developer because it can match mental state, but the later reader may be somewhat lost when seeing it depending on how much of the data state they've internalized. A nice comment to explain the intent is useful, and when you're already saving space by eliding syntax, keep a good ratio of action to code on the screen (which is really what we're optimizing for here most times anyway, right?)
The "compact" line format is something that is very information dense and really really hard to parse for a human's eye, compared to the clearly visually structured prior format.
Personally, if I'd see something like that outside of a code golf tournament, I'd run because that kind of code density means that at least one of the developer(s) believes themselves to be some kind of code wizard who loves Matrix-style display, and it means that new developers have a very steep learning curve ahead of them.