Re:GitHub Super Linter: one linter to rule them all
by javajosh on Friday June 19, 2020 @10:08AM
(#23574659)
I like the point in general, but I will say there are times when idiosyncratic formatting can really help understanding "this particular bit of code". Often it has to do with aligning values so that they are easier to read; if a code formatter was smart enough to at least understand the signal the programmer is sending, and maintain (or even improve!) that kind of formatter, it would be the best of all worlds.
One simple example is when you're parsing text and you have a long list of simple one-line if statements. I personally think it's wasteful and harder to read that block of code if you impose curly braces and new lines on that list of conditionals. This kind of formatting convention has been around for at least 40 years, and it makes the code more readable. I have yet to see an auto-formatter that doesn't turn that kind of code section into an unreadable mess.
Re:GitHub Super Linter: one linter to rule them all
by dnautics on Friday June 19, 2020 @11:15AM
(#23575303)
Or key value lists where the keys have slightly different lengths.
Re:GitHub Super Linter: one linter to rule them all
by Lorkki on Saturday June 20, 2020 @04:13AM
(#23582575)
It's possible to do both: https://designyoutrust.com/2019/03/in-berlin-there-was-a-gia...
There's also plenty of room for art in the choice of materials and colours as well as the shapes of buildings. Likewise, with code, if you limit yourself to only what one person can do, you'll end up with a very constrained view of what "art" means.
This is the same for programming. Each dev have their own taste in term of code style and code formatting preferences. I was an early employee in a startup, and at some point I was able to tell who wrote a chunk of code just from the code style, it was fun :) but as company grown, and team got bigger, it got more "professional", now we have prettier which erases a big part of our code personality. If you believe like me that coders are artists you might find that a bit sad, but the truth is that most Enterprise software building is wall painting, and art doesn't have its place there. That doesn't prevent us from painting Mona Lisa at home though :)