I do that because I write a lot of JavaScript and semicolon insertion will mess you up if you don't make a habit of putting the opening brace on the end of the line. I suppose I could have two different styles but that sounds like an even worse option.

I have no idea who started it but it's whacked.

You don't know when you see one line indented if it is a line continuation or conditional logic (or both) And god help you if you accidentally delete one of those opening braces -- it's impossible to spot sometimes unless you look closely.

In at least one language (TCL), the interpreter cannot detect the block unless the brace is at the end of the line. Granted, I hate TCL as a language, so I won't defend it...but if someone were accustomed to moving between TCL and other things, they may tend to retain this habit.

The typical arguments are that the indentation style is more compact vertically and that it is used in a number of popular publications and projects (e.g. K&R, the Linux kernel).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentation_style#K.26R_style

The Java style guide from Sun does this:

http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/CodeConventions.doc5....

The PEAR PHP coding standards recommend this:

http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php

And, as has been pointed out, if you don't do this in Javascript the JS interpreter will helpfully insert bugs for you (in the form of extra semicolons).

When Ruby uses braces at all, opening braces are placed at the ends of lines. (Usually the closing braces are on the same line, though... most multi-line Ruby blocks use the "do...end" keywords.)

The issue doesn't come up in Python at all, right? Likewise Lisp.

So it seems that only programmers who take up C as a first language will be exposed to the opening-brace-on-its-own-line style before they become used to the other style.

I use an IDE that allows code folding. With opening braces on their own line, I get:

  function bob()
  {
  --------------

On the same line as the function, I get:

  function bob() {
  ----------------

Much cleaner. Plus, I don't worry about being able to match braces against each other, I have an IDE that does that for me. (When my cursor is against one brace, it's partner is highlighted.)