It was pretty common say 25 years ago when you would be developing in a terminal. When you were limited in the number of lines displayed, it sometimes made it easier to follow the code when functions and control structures were large.

I know I had coworkers using brief configured to do that.

i think it had something to do with indentation being all over the place.

I don't know, the guy is no longer around. Maybe some code-completion tool (write "for" and it completes the syntax) because it's all over the place.

Eventually, we find out he wrote it all manually.