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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: 0.422s | 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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1. eloisant ◴[06 Feb 25 14:18 UTC] No.42962529[source]▶
Now we have tooling to make sure (1) code style is consistent and (2) you don't have to stress about it.

Every language has automatic formatters. Use them, configure them if you don't like the default (in accordance with your team), and configure your editor so that is applied automatically when you save. And use CI to detect PRs with bad formatting so devs who don't have configured their editor yet can't break it.

Same with linters, you still have to agree with your co-workers about which rules make sense to be enforced, but with good editor integration you can see it right away and fix it as you code.

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2. nijave ◴[06 Feb 25 17:47 UTC] No.42964690[source]▶
That's my stance--formatting and style is important but it's also a job for machines. I think you can still quibble over formatting but the result should be automation, not nit-picky code review comments or chat war threads.