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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: 0.005s | 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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ozim ◴[05 Feb 25 13:58 UTC] No.42948549[source]▶
If you want to compare to artisans - they were stressing about details that customers see, details that customers don’t see were to cut corners on.

Making fuss about indentation in code file is not artisanal. It is insane weirdo if we are charitable and if not clueless and childish.

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1. sumtechguy ◴[05 Feb 25 14:14 UTC] No.42948725[source]▶
Everyone wants a particular style. Except when they have to use someone elses style.

Pick a style stick with it. Review it every 6 months to year to see if anything needs to be tweaked.

If you hear 'we are professionals' you are about to see code that has 20 different styles and design patterns.

I worked with one guy who could not make up his mind and changed the whole style guide about every 2-3 weeks. It royal made him mad the original style guide fit on a couple of postit notes. Me and two other engineers bashed it out in a 1-2 hour meeting at the start of the project (odd number of people to vote on anything). It came down to the fact he came in after the fact and had no say in it. Then proceeded to change everything. One week it was tabs everywhere then spaces then tabs again. One day camel case, week later all lower, another partial hungarian, upper on random things, etc. Waste of time.

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2. bluGill ◴[05 Feb 25 14:29 UTC] No.42948921[source]▶
Ideally pick a style from a different large organization that you have no input in. Because the organization is large they will have put a lot of effort into it, but since you have no input you can just follow it without thinking. Sometimes an organization will make some really weird choices and you will be forced to change styles (google as rejected a lot of the latest C++ standard and thus their C++ style guide is not to be used elsewhere, but there are plenty of other good options).

Second best is to start a large cross company standards organization and only allow one representative per organization. Make sure there is a lot of process standing in the way of changes so that changes are only made when really justified (because most are not justified)