5 ms·

I don't want to disparage prettier, but to call it a foundational piece...

fallat 3y ago
I agree. Foundational isn't the right word here. I would though accept "impactful". A lot of people care about code formatting "taken care of".
wentin 3y ago
Maybe essential is a better word.
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  That is still far too much an exaggeration. This is an opinionated beautifier. Its a vanity item with some downstream utility benefits.
  - cdmckay 3y ago
    A formatter is pretty essential when working in a team. It saves tons of time wasted on code formatting in code reviews.
    - 0x0000000 3y ago
      > A formatter is pretty essential when working in a team. I worked on a team without a formatter for more than 5 years. I'm certain many people have done the same. "Essential" is overselling.
      - aniforprez 3y ago
        I think at this point I would consider a formatter essential for working with a team. It helps make code style opinionated and fixed and I have no surprises when reading code. No one doing weird formatting to align random things. Any formatting tool that allows for pages upon pages of options is simply not something I want to deal with. Something like black, gofmt and prettier is vital
        austin-cheney 3y ago
        Bike shedding. I say this as somebody who has written a once prominent JavaScript code beautifier. Automating code beautification is a nice to have. It becomes essential when developers cannot be bothered to focus on more important things because either more important things are too challenging for the given developers or because the given developers want to feel more important than their contributions/decisions are actually worth.
      - shrimpx 3y ago
        Auto formatting tools like prettier and black didn’t use to be essential but they’re quickly becoming essential. Just look at the growth curves for pip and npm installs. I for one feel like my editor is broken if it doesn’t auto format on save.
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    How about ubiquitous?
silverlyra 3y ago
When seeing Prettier as a software tool, to consider Prettier more “foundational” than (e.g.) TypeScript or V8 does seem like an inversion of hierarchy [1] – but viewed as history, as a practice, Prettier’s accomplishment of making automatic code formatting (à la `go fmt` or Python `black`) widespread in JavaScript, the lingua franca of programming, is foundational. All that time spent staring at code that could have been more readable, or writing style guides and reformatting code, is now spent doing what we were trying to do in the first place. And now, speeding up the time we wait to apply formatting or check it in CI by rewriting it in Rust™ gives us a bit more of that time back. :) [1]: https://youtu.be/ar9WRwCiSr0 https://youtu.be/ar9WRwCiSr0
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I wouldn't call it foundational, but it would be one of the first things I'd set up in a new JS based project, alongside unit tests, com/transpiling and eslint.

I agree. Foundational isn't the right word here. I would though accept "impactful". A lot of people care about code formatting "taken care of".

wentin 3y ago

Maybe essential is a better word.

austin-cheney 3y ago
That is still far too much an exaggeration. This is an opinionated beautifier. Its a vanity item with some downstream utility benefits.
- cdmckay 3y ago
  A formatter is pretty essential when working in a team. It saves tons of time wasted on code formatting in code reviews.
  - 0x0000000 3y ago
    > A formatter is pretty essential when working in a team. I worked on a team without a formatter for more than 5 years. I'm certain many people have done the same. "Essential" is overselling.
    - aniforprez 3y ago
      I think at this point I would consider a formatter essential for working with a team. It helps make code style opinionated and fixed and I have no surprises when reading code. No one doing weird formatting to align random things. Any formatting tool that allows for pages upon pages of options is simply not something I want to deal with. Something like black, gofmt and prettier is vital
      - austin-cheney 3y ago
        Bike shedding. I say this as somebody who has written a once prominent JavaScript code beautifier. Automating code beautification is a nice to have. It becomes essential when developers cannot be bothered to focus on more important things because either more important things are too challenging for the given developers or because the given developers want to feel more important than their contributions/decisions are actually worth.
    - shrimpx 3y ago
      Auto formatting tools like prettier and black didn’t use to be essential but they’re quickly becoming essential. Just look at the growth curves for pip and npm installs. I for one feel like my editor is broken if it doesn’t auto format on save.
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  How about ubiquitous?

silverlyra 3y ago

When seeing Prettier as a software tool, to consider Prettier more “foundational” than (e.g.) TypeScript or V8 does seem like an inversion of hierarchy [1] – but viewed as history, as a practice, Prettier’s accomplishment of making automatic code formatting (à la `go fmt` or Python `black`) widespread in JavaScript, the lingua franca of programming, is foundational. All that time spent staring at code that could have been more readable, or writing style guides and reformatting code, is now spent doing what we were trying to do in the first place. And now, speeding up the time we wait to apply formatting or check it in CI by rewriting it in Rust™ gives us a bit more of that time back. :) [1]: https://youtu.be/ar9WRwCiSr0 https://youtu.be/ar9WRwCiSr0

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

I wouldn't call it foundational, but it would be one of the first things I'd set up in a new JS based project, alongside unit tests, com/transpiling and eslint.