Personally, while I can and sometimes do have to use the style mentioned in point #3 of the blog post, I curse under my breath every time. (It should be: "\n} else {\n"! Not "\n}\nelse\n{\n"!) Saving myself that frustration can be useful. But for a better example, I'll sometimes come across code indented inconsistently with spaces and tabs, and need to reformat with :retab and == in vim. Separating complex code into chunks makes it easier to parse for me, adding comments, etc. etc. etc. Remember, this is to understand the code, not necessarily to make a bugfix. If I'm going to muck with someone else's code, I'll usually follow their style even if it's not mine. But I might first solve it in mine.