If it's a longer sub or if block, and I'm at the closing }, I can hit % in vi, and it takes me to the matching one. If it's on the same line, I see the sub name or conditional on the screen, which is _exactly_ what I want. If it's on the next line, I have to then scroll up a line to see, and the next thing I'm usually going to want to do after seeing that is % back to the end brace (to go back to where I was.) So, it annoys me to no end when people put them on the next line.

Can't you just rebind the % key so that (in addition to what it usually does) it checks that the line it is on is not the first or last line in the buffer, scrolling one line if necessary to accomplish that? vim fans claim it's pretty customizable, so one would think that would be easy (though, not being a vi user myself, I'm speculating here).

(Of course, I prefer the behavior wherein the editor shows the line containing the opening brace in the status area when your cursor rests after the closing brace, so you don't have to hit a key in the first place, which brings us back to your argument, since there's not room in the status area for two lines without expanding it, which is a bit jarring.)

My own reason for preferring nestled braces in most cases is that it makes the code significantly more vertically compact, which allows a lot more context to fit on the screen at once, making the code easier to follow, since you can see more with less scrolling about.