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maratc • yesterday at 12:46 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

My argument is more to the tune of "everybody’s code looking slightly different is not a problem in practice as long as I can read and understand it."

However since you've asked so nicely here you go: everybody’s code looking different is because all humans are different. It's what makes us human. I am very serious about my craftsmanship, and I bring my "humanity" to it: sometimes I include a cultural reference (as in the example above), or an internal joke in the name of a (very long) variable, or vent my frustration in a comment.

My first ten years of writing Python were uneventful; nobody commented about my style and I never commented about others'. With the advent of grammar nazi bots, everyone is supposed to now please them by writing completely bland code, which in my opinion degrades me from a craftsman to a code-monkey. This is dehumanising, in a certain sense.

Replies

refactor_master • yesterday at 1:20 PM

But your choice of funny variable names is not a craft, and you’re not a craftsman if you think it matters. What matters is extensibility, maintainability and value delivered.

I care how the food tastes, not that the chef has a really cool Japanese knife and is really fast at cutting onions.

➕ show 2 replies
preg_match • yesterday at 9:26 PM

It depends wildly on how one defines "slightly". If it overflows in the editor, then that's a problem IMO. But some people would say no. In PHP we often see this type of thing:

  $someArr = [
    'config' => [
      'system' => 'linux',
      ...
     ],
  ];
Versus:

  $someArr =
    [
      'config' =>
        [
          'system' => 'linux',
          ...
        ],
    ];
Well... option 2 uses both significantly more vertical space, and horizontal space. But it's technically PSR compliant. However, we really need standard formatting on this, because it's annoying.
jghn • yesterday at 2:29 PM

I'd go so far as to argue that person to person differences are helpful to a reader. When I am dealing with a long term code base it's easy to develop a feel for who is responsible for different constructs without needing to rely on the git history. This gives me immediate information on what to expect.