A programming argument that can be convincingly shown to be only a matter of personal preference is irrelevant, but I strongly disagree those are that common. V

A programming argument that can be convincingly shown to be only a matter of personal preference is irrelevant, but I strongly disagree those are that common. Various programming language constructs have various properties and if you had the opportunity to maintain a single project for some 5-10 years, to experiment with different implementations of same functionalities etc. you learn that certain techniques prevent problems and certain others provoke them. Look at the writing of Joshua Bloch based on his experience with designing the Java standard libraries, you will find plenty of arguments that you could think are about "style", but in fact he always includes a very detailed and concrete discussion about why one way is superior to the other. Similarly with some of the articles of John Carmack from idSoftware. For me the revelation was that there is indeed no such thing as "style" so that some techniques are just "prettier" than the others, it is all a matter of consequences a given implementation has for other developers using the code and for its maintainers.