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Formatting code should be unnecessary

maxleiter.com

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Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#71

Post by pletnes »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #61
automatoney wrote: post #50

I've never understood why people care so much about the linter settings. It's so obviously bikeshedding, just make a choice, run the linter automatically and be done with it. I'm too busy doing actual software engineering to care about where exactly everything goes - I promise after a week you'll just get used to whatever format your team lands on.

I’ll go a step further. I’ve never understood why people care so much about the linter. Just let people write code and don’t worry about the linter. I don’t need to fight a linter which makes my code worse when I could just write it in a way that doesn’t suck. I promise it’ll be fine. I’m too busy doing actual software engineering to care if code is not perfectly formatted to some arbitrary style specification. I fee…

Some linters find issues you care about. Forgotten print statements or confusing indentations come to mind. I’ve worked with people who easily forget, and I’m one of them myself.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#72

Post by skinner927 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #62
jupp0r wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but max line length being so high you have to horizontally scroll while reading code is very detrimental to productivity.

Define high? I think 120 is pretty reasonable. Maybe even as high as 140. Log statements however I think have an effectively unbounded length. Nothing I hate more than a stupid linter turning a sprinkling of logs into 7 line monsters. cargo fmt is especially bad about this. It’s so bad.

I still prefer 80. I won’t (publicly) scoff at 100 though. IMO 120 is reasonable for HTML and Java, but that’s about it.

Sent from my 49” G9 Ultrawide.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#73

Post by teo_zero »

bee_rider wrote: post #30
kelseyfrog wrote: post #2

The tradeoff here is not being able to use a universal set of tooling to interact with source files. Anything but text makes grep, diff, sed, and version control less effective. You end up locked into specialized tools, formats, or IDE extensions, while the Unix philosophy thrives on composability with plain text. There's a scissor that cuts through the formatting debate: If initial space width was configurable in th…

Is it possible converted from the DIANA ir back to something that looks like source code? Then the result of the conversion backward could be grepped, etc…

From TFA:

> Everyone had their own pretty-printing settings for viewing [DIANA] however they wanted.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#74

Post by jwilber »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #61
automatoney wrote: post #50

I've never understood why people care so much about the linter settings. It's so obviously bikeshedding, just make a choice, run the linter automatically and be done with it. I'm too busy doing actual software engineering to care about where exactly everything goes - I promise after a week you'll just get used to whatever format your team lands on.

I’ll go a step further. I’ve never understood why people care so much about the linter. Just let people write code and don’t worry about the linter. I don’t need to fight a linter which makes my code worse when I could just write it in a way that doesn’t suck. I promise it’ll be fine. I’m too busy doing actual software engineering to care if code is not perfectly formatted to some arbitrary style specification. I fee…

But what’s the issue? Setting lint rules is one and done - running pre-commit can be made automatic?

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#75

Post by skinner927 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #61
automatoney wrote: post #50

I've never understood why people care so much about the linter settings. It's so obviously bikeshedding, just make a choice, run the linter automatically and be done with it. I'm too busy doing actual software engineering to care about where exactly everything goes - I promise after a week you'll just get used to whatever format your team lands on.

I’ll go a step further. I’ve never understood why people care so much about the linter. Just let people write code and don’t worry about the linter. I don’t need to fight a linter which makes my code worse when I could just write it in a way that doesn’t suck. I promise it’ll be fine. I’m too busy doing actual software engineering to care if code is not perfectly formatted to some arbitrary style specification. I fee…

The point of linters is so the code looks the same regardless of who wrote it. This way it’s easier to read. Some people have horrible style and linters really help.

I find linters make me faster. Sometimes I’m feeling lazy and I just want to pump out a bunch of lines of ugly code with mappings poorly formatted, bad indents, and just have it all synched up when I save.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#76

Post by garbagepatch »

automatoney wrote: post #50

I've never understood why people care so much about the linter settings. It's so obviously bikeshedding, just make a choice, run the linter automatically and be done with it. I'm too busy doing actual software engineering to care about where exactly everything goes - I promise after a week you'll just get used to whatever format your team lands on.

> just make a choice

Now you are bikeshedding. Just go with the defaults.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#77

Post by raincole »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #61
automatoney wrote: post #50

I've never understood why people care so much about the linter settings. It's so obviously bikeshedding, just make a choice, run the linter automatically and be done with it. I'm too busy doing actual software engineering to care about where exactly everything goes - I promise after a week you'll just get used to whatever format your team lands on.

I’ll go a step further. I’ve never understood why people care so much about the linter. Just let people write code and don’t worry about the linter. I don’t need to fight a linter which makes my code worse when I could just write it in a way that doesn’t suck. I promise it’ll be fine. I’m too busy doing actual software engineering to care if code is not perfectly formatted to some arbitrary style specification. I fee…

People like you are the exact reason why linter is a thing.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#78

Post by hulitu »

jitl wrote: post #64
jupp0r wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but max line length being so high you have to horizontally scroll while reading code is very detrimental to productivity.

every editor can wrap text these days. good ones will even indent the wrapped text properly

> every editor can wrap text these days.

could. Yesterday notepad (win 10) just plainly refused.

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#79

Post by peanball »

sublinear wrote: post #14
cowsandmilk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is diff less effective? I see the diff in the formatting I prefer? With sed, I can project the source into a formatting most convenient for what I’m trying to do with sed. And I have no idea what you’re on about version control. It ruins sending patch files that require a line number around, but most places don’t do that any more. What I would be curious on is tracing from errors back to the source code. Nearly e…

You'd have to run diff and sed before the formatter which is harder for everyone.

I can only recommend difftastic[1], which is a language aware diff. Independent of linter that shows the logical diff, not an assortment of characters or lines that changed.

[1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

Re: Formatting code should be unnecessary

#80

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

jitl wrote: post #64
jupp0r wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but max line length being so high you have to horizontally scroll while reading code is very detrimental to productivity.

every editor can wrap text these days. good ones will even indent the wrapped text properly

You still have to minimize the wrapping that happens, because wrapped lines of code tend to be continuous instead of being properly spaced so as to make its parts individually readable.
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