Hacker News Reader

Comment by wanted2 | Hacker News Reader

> The reason to downvote parent is that it's bringing up a tired debate.

Do you mean that even when it is scientifically proved that your code is more readable when using more white space like in: console.log( "Hello world!" ); we are not even allowed to mention that because some random dudes decided we have to adhere to the "airbnb" settings?

I bring this up because I think it's pathetic, like many other things in the JS community. Tired debate or not, we should have freedom of thinking and speech please! Programming is also a very creative activity, we should not destroy that with these kind of silly rules that make it more of an administrative activity.

View on HN

No, you’re free to talk about whatever you want. But don’t expect pointless bikeshedding to be well-received.

First, it’s not a real problem. The JS community is pretty much equivalent to any other of this matter.

Second, it’s not a big issue. Use a code formatter to make sure shared code is in the agreed style for whatever project you are contributing to.

Third, this does not affect your own code. You are free and encouraged to use whatever formatting convention works for your own teams. Just make sure it’s consistent and enforced.

Keeping consistent style is anything but a “silly rule” and it’s essentially no effort.

It is a real problem, I've seen heated discussions in a few companies, and it can take out a big part of the fun you have in your work.

We really need to write an editor plugin/solution for this. Your editor should show the code in your preferred style, but saving it in the team's agreed style. And then a local-style.js for your own settings, and a team-style.js for the team settings. local-style.js in the .gitignore. Should be possible though?

It'd be possible but it's a non-trivial amount of work: think about things like linting or debuggers where line numbers might vary substantially, sequencing things in tools around merges and code review, etc.

The option you can do right now is to use something like Prettier where everyone's experience is entirely consistent and you have no cognitive load switching styles or dealing with inconsistency. This is basically free and means that there's a whole slew of high-emotion discussions which you can stop having for the rest of your career, in favor of working on things which actually matter. The older I get, the more that looks like pure win.

You could absolutely make that. It sounds neat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com