[SamReidHughes]

> To be honest it actually makes code cleaner and therefore easier to read.

It does not logically follow from the code being "cleaner" that it is easier to read. Having to scan across a field of whitespace to get to the number makes it harder to read and easier to make mistakes. Having the indentation of the number be unrelated to the length of the variable name adds another aspect that makes it harder to read and easier to make mistakes.

It's also harder to edit, which makes you do fewer edits that make the code materially better.

[wetmore]

It depends on context. For example, here is a function from a project I'm working on:

    parseModifier : String -> Outcome Modifier
    parseModifier s = case s of
      "shift"   -> Ok Shift
      "ctrl"    -> Ok Ctrl
      "alt"     -> Ok Alt
      "meta"    -> Ok Meta
      "command" -> Ok Meta
      "windows" -> Ok Meta
      x         -> Err <| "Unknown modifier: " ++ x

I find it easier to read as is rather than if I dropped the alignment:

    parseModifier : String -> Outcome Modifier
    parseModifier s = case s of
      "shift" -> Ok Shift
      "ctrl" -> Ok Ctrl
      "alt" -> Ok Alt
      "meta" -> Ok Meta
      "command" -> Ok Meta
      "windows" -> Ok Meta
      x -> Err <| "Unknown modifier: " ++ x

As developers we spend more time reading code than editing it. Optimizing for readability seems like a better goal than optimizing for edit speed. Besides, most editors have functionality to align code. When I am looking over a file, the second example looks like a jumble of words to me, while the aligned version seems easier to parse (ha).

[mercurial]

I agree that unaligned switches/pattern matches are bad (and in fact, there is an utility for OCaml which will nicely indent your pattern matches).