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Software development topics I've changed my mind on

(chriskiehl.com)
873 points belter | 2 comments | 05 Feb 25 09:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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latexr ◴[05 Feb 25 11:39 UTC] No.42947128[source]▶
> Most won't care about the craft. Cherish the ones that do, meet the rest where they are

> (…)

> People who stress over code style, linting rules, or other minutia remain insane weirdos to me. Focus on more important things.

What you call “stressing over minutiae” others might call “caring for the craft”. Revered artisans are precisely the ones who care for the details. “Stressing” is your value judgement, not necessarily the ground truth.

What you’re essentially saying is “cherish the people who care up to the level I personally and subjectively think is right, and dismiss everyone who cares more as insane weirdos who cannot prioritise”.

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jajko ◴[05 Feb 25 11:52 UTC] No.42947236[source]▶
Not really. Obsessing over breaking lines after famous 80 chars in Eclipse was, is and will be idiotic to be polite. Surprisingly large amount of people were obsessed by this long after we got much bigger screens, if that was ever an argument (it wasn't for me). 2 spaces vs 4 spaces or tab. Cases like these were not that rare, even though now it seems better. That's not productive focus of one's (or team's) energy and a proper waste of money for employer/customer, it brings 0 added value to products apart form polishing ego of specific individual.

Folks who care about the craft obsess (well within realm of being realistic) more about architecture, good use of design patterns, using good modern toolset (but not bleeding edge), not building monolithic spaghetti monster that can't evolve much further, avoiding quick hacks that end up being hard to remove and work with over time and so on.

If you don't see a difference between those groups, I don't think you understood author's points.

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1. bayindirh ◴[05 Feb 25 12:34 UTC] No.42947603[source]▶
Reporting as an Eclipse user of 20+ years, and a person who cares about the craft:

The choice for me is simple:

If I'm going to view the code I'm writing in a 80x24 terminal later on, I'll break that lines, and will try really hard to not get closer to 80 chars per line.

If that code is only going to be seen in Eclipse and only by me, I won't break that lines.

I omitted your other examples for brevity.

Having bigger screens doesn't make longer lines legit or valid. I may have anything between 4-9 terminals open on my 28" 2K screen anytime, and no, I don't want to see lines going from one side to another like spikes, even if I have written them.

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2. paddy_m ◴[05 Feb 25 15:12 UTC] No.42949552[source]▶
I like 80 columns, I can tolerate 100 or 120. I get really annoyed with formatting standards, JS/TS in particular that waste a whole line for a closing brace. Standard aspect has screens more limited vertically than horizontally.

When dealing with tabular data, particularly test data, I find most formatting lacking. I want to be able to specify blocks that align on the decimal point. Especially when dealing with lists of dicts. This makes reading test fixtures much more intuitive than default indentation styles.

Has anyone seen a formatter where you can specify a block be formatted in that manner?

  [{'a':  3.89, 'b':  10},
   {'a': 12.3,  'b': 233}]
instead of

  [{'a': 3.89,
    'b': 10},
   {'a': 12.3,
    'b': 233}]