Thud, Thud, Thud

[billroper]

I hate religious arguments. That said, I object to getting an e-mail that says, "Hi, we're going to reformat all of your carefully formatted source code, because we don't like your formatting style."

I understand that I'm not formally working on that particular project at the moment, but it still rankles.

Comments

[grey-lensman.livejournal.com]

Wait -- they're being paid to waste time and risk introducing bugs into a working codebase? Wierd.

[billroper]

The group has had formatting wars for a decade. Many of them are religious issues (K&R vs. brace matching -- and I admit that I simply find K&R allows me better control of where I'm putting my white space).

But, you see, by being consistent (and, in my opinion, consistently the way that this other guy prefers it), we will produce a better code base.

*sigh*

[whl.livejournal.com]

Some people's styles are drifting where I work; we used to match and now they are starting to differ. But that can be good, as it means I can look at a part of the code and tell someone edited it after I did and introduced the bug. (And ask them why they thought that was right.)

Also, language changes cause issues. Which is preferable:
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector: @selector(auth:) toTarget: self withObject: SSID];

or

[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector : @selector(auth :) toTarget : self withObject : SSID];

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

Well, consistent -is- better, in that if everybody uses the same system then everybody understands it better. But what -he's- saying is,

"Your formatting is so clear and understandable that I can easily understand it and can convert it to this other system without any chance of confusing anyone."

But if it's that clear, what's the point? :-)