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Consistency for consistency's sake is not a virtue. The best solution to all the style discussion nonsense is an automated, mandated style. The better solution

Consistency for consistency's sake is not a virtue. The best solution to all the style discussion nonsense is an automated, mandated style. The better solution is the team being mature enough to only care about real problems and not gate development with personal preferences. There's something to be said for feeling comfortable in your space. The company's codebase is not your space.

npsimons 6y ago
Consistency for readability is a virtue; did you miss that part? And it's not about "gating" development with "personal preferences", what a strawman. If someone can't be bothered to run the formatting tool included in the repo on their code before submitting, then I can't be bothered to review their submission. > The best solution to all the style discussion nonsense is an automated, mandated style. Yes, exactly what I said. Again, did you miss that?
- markrages 6y ago
  Consistency doesn't always serve readability. In written English, you can convey the same basic facts with a hundred different sentences. A good author will choose the one that best conveys emphasis and subtle gradations of meaning to the attentive reader. Code is also written for humans to read, so the best written code will use all the available facilities of the language to convey meaning to the reader.
  - makapuf 6y ago
    Exactly Like english or any written language, generally books are typesetted against a bunch of general conventions. You dont choose if you get one or two spaces after a semicolon. Your book is not great because you wrote it in leetcase, you focus on the meaning, not the details.
    - musingsole 6y ago
      You really do get to choose if you want 1 or 2 spaces or whatever formatting you want. Certain publishing houses might have style guides that they follow strictly and others less so, but all this just makes the formatting for a book a perfect metaphor to formatting code.
      - tharkun__ 6y ago
        You don't. The consistency is within the same book (or maybe publisher). A book would look ridiculous if every paragraph was using a different number of spaces after punctuation. But between two books its just personal preference whether you agree with the choice the author/publisher made.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    I'm curious to see an example of how this plays out in code (not comments).
    - musingsole 6y ago
      Using python, the choice between a list comprehension or a for loop is often a style choice. I can't say this is common practice, but a list comprehension is great when the iteration is simple and quickly becomes hard for a human to parse if you're doing anything slightly complex. If you need any complex logic, you have to use a for-loop. So -- when written by a developer with these perspectives -- a for-loop signals complicated iteration logic and a list comprehension signals simple iteration logic. But you could do either with both if you chose. So, it's a style choice that can be used to convey meaning.
      - jl2718 6y ago
        I failed a google interview for using a nested generator comprehension instead of for loops. It solved the problem, but the interviewer was utterly disgusted by it. He had some fair points about it being hard to inspect and modify and add exceptions.
Seb-C 6y ago
I agree with automating it, but I also have seen automated styles going too far, more often than not. Automated styling should be kept minimal, like checking names and indentation. Absolute rules does not work because then you cannot deviate from it even if it is appropriate in the right situation. The standard JavaScript checkers nowadays are ridiculously strict and forces me to spend time writing a less readable code. For example yesterday my code was invalid because I did not write properties of an object alphabetically. So I had to convert this: { host: , port: , key: , username: , password: , } Into this mess: { host: , key: , password: , port: , username: , } With tslint I cannot even execute my code if the formatting is invalid. So if I write a console.log or forget to add a space between the slash and the code I commented, the compilation crashes.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Maybe that should not be an object then, but a URL or just several objects.
  - Seb-C 6y ago
    This is a very common pattern for a lot of third party packages. And it is just an example to show that there are perfectly legitimate cases that are more readable when not alphabetically sorted.
- ericmcer 6y ago
  It is consistent though, do you have a better generic system for grouping object keys than alphabetization? It’s pretty handy to approach a codebase knowing that it has enforced this convention.
  - Seb-C 6y ago
    My point is that having rules on this kind of detail is more harmful than beneficial, so there should not be one in the first place.
  - 6y ago
tjconsult 6y ago
> The company's codebase is not your space That’s one possible way to look at “the company’s code.” Another one is that you’re in “that” code six (or more) hours a day and it’s usually written by someone else. So if everyone codes to _their_ comfort, there’s a likelihood that no one is comfortable in the code ever. I find code style standards that a team as a whole has compromised upon (aka consistency) a reasonable approach to “average comfort.”

npsimons 6y ago

Consistency for readability is a virtue; did you miss that part? And it's not about "gating" development with "personal preferences", what a strawman. If someone can't be bothered to run the formatting tool included in the repo on their code before submitting, then I can't be bothered to review their submission. > The best solution to all the style discussion nonsense is an automated, mandated style. Yes, exactly what I said. Again, did you miss that?

markrages 6y ago
Consistency doesn't always serve readability. In written English, you can convey the same basic facts with a hundred different sentences. A good author will choose the one that best conveys emphasis and subtle gradations of meaning to the attentive reader. Code is also written for humans to read, so the best written code will use all the available facilities of the language to convey meaning to the reader.
- makapuf 6y ago
  Exactly Like english or any written language, generally books are typesetted against a bunch of general conventions. You dont choose if you get one or two spaces after a semicolon. Your book is not great because you wrote it in leetcase, you focus on the meaning, not the details.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    You really do get to choose if you want 1 or 2 spaces or whatever formatting you want. Certain publishing houses might have style guides that they follow strictly and others less so, but all this just makes the formatting for a book a perfect metaphor to formatting code.
    - tharkun__ 6y ago
      You don't. The consistency is within the same book (or maybe publisher). A book would look ridiculous if every paragraph was using a different number of spaces after punctuation. But between two books its just personal preference whether you agree with the choice the author/publisher made.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  I'm curious to see an example of how this plays out in code (not comments).
  - musingsole 6y ago
    Using python, the choice between a list comprehension or a for loop is often a style choice. I can't say this is common practice, but a list comprehension is great when the iteration is simple and quickly becomes hard for a human to parse if you're doing anything slightly complex. If you need any complex logic, you have to use a for-loop. So -- when written by a developer with these perspectives -- a for-loop signals complicated iteration logic and a list comprehension signals simple iteration logic. But you could do either with both if you chose. So, it's a style choice that can be used to convey meaning.
    - jl2718 6y ago
      I failed a google interview for using a nested generator comprehension instead of for loops. It solved the problem, but the interviewer was utterly disgusted by it. He had some fair points about it being hard to inspect and modify and add exceptions.

Seb-C 6y ago

I agree with automating it, but I also have seen automated styles going too far, more often than not. Automated styling should be kept minimal, like checking names and indentation. Absolute rules does not work because then you cannot deviate from it even if it is appropriate in the right situation. The standard JavaScript checkers nowadays are ridiculously strict and forces me to spend time writing a less readable code. For example yesterday my code was invalid because I did not write properties of an object alphabetically. So I had to convert this: { host: , port: , key: , username: , password: , } Into this mess: { host: , key: , password: , port: , username: , } With tslint I cannot even execute my code if the formatting is invalid. So if I write a console.log or forget to add a space between the slash and the code I commented, the compilation crashes.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
Maybe that should not be an object then, but a URL or just several objects.
- Seb-C 6y ago
  This is a very common pattern for a lot of third party packages. And it is just an example to show that there are perfectly legitimate cases that are more readable when not alphabetically sorted.
ericmcer 6y ago
It is consistent though, do you have a better generic system for grouping object keys than alphabetization? It’s pretty handy to approach a codebase knowing that it has enforced this convention.
- Seb-C 6y ago
  My point is that having rules on this kind of detail is more harmful than beneficial, so there should not be one in the first place.
- 6y ago

tjconsult 6y ago

> The company's codebase is not your space That’s one possible way to look at “the company’s code.” Another one is that you’re in “that” code six (or more) hours a day and it’s usually written by someone else. So if everyone codes to _their_ comfort, there’s a likelihood that no one is comfortable in the code ever. I find code style standards that a team as a whole has compromised upon (aka consistency) a reasonable approach to “average comfort.”