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I honestly don't understand why devs are so hung up on formatting. I know, I know consistency. I've heard that for years. I disagree that it matters. Where I w

I honestly don't understand why devs are so hung up on formatting. I know, I know consistency. I've heard that for years. I disagree that it matters. Where I work, one codebase is formatted with black, another is not. The un-blackened codebase is rife with all sorts of style inconsistencies. This does not make it more taxing to read. The only downside is the useless PR nits from folks who randomly decide you ought to format something a bit differently. If it were up to me, I would just ban all style related comments and move on with life. But adopting Black seems politically feasible, so I advocate for that.

mdaniel 5y ago
> I honestly don't understand why devs are so hung up on formatting. Because easily 98% of the work of any developer is being a "wetware compiler" since "code is written for other people." So the faster the human can mentally run the code, the faster they can then decide what action to take next > This does not make it more taxing to read. Ah, spoken like someone who has not yet worked in a "foreign language" shop, where the developers are new to the language at hand and bring their old "best practices" to the current language
- patrick451 5y ago
  >Because easily 98% of the work of any developer is being a "wetware compiler" since "code is written for other people." People always say this. But they fail to provide any evidence that consistency helps, and if so if by how much. All they have is personal experience, which is all I have as well. And my personal experience says it just doesn't matter. > Ah, spoken like someone who has not yet worked in a "foreign language" shop, where the developers are new to the language at hand and bring their old "best practices" to the current language Quite the assumption. That's where many of the inconsistencies come from. And Black isn't going to help with different language idioms. That matters a lot more than whether or not you use a trailing comma for the last item of a multi-line list or not.

mdaniel 5y ago

> I honestly don't understand why devs are so hung up on formatting. Because easily 98% of the work of any developer is being a "wetware compiler" since "code is written for other people." So the faster the human can mentally run the code, the faster they can then decide what action to take next > This does not make it more taxing to read. Ah, spoken like someone who has not yet worked in a "foreign language" shop, where the developers are new to the language at hand and bring their old "best practices" to the current language

patrick451 5y ago
>Because easily 98% of the work of any developer is being a "wetware compiler" since "code is written for other people." People always say this. But they fail to provide any evidence that consistency helps, and if so if by how much. All they have is personal experience, which is all I have as well. And my personal experience says it just doesn't matter. > Ah, spoken like someone who has not yet worked in a "foreign language" shop, where the developers are new to the language at hand and bring their old "best practices" to the current language Quite the assumption. That's where many of the inconsistencies come from. And Black isn't going to help with different language idioms. That matters a lot more than whether or not you use a trailing comma for the last item of a multi-line list or not.