[nitemice]

Depending on the kind of mistakes they've made, better again would be to provide a style/implementation guide for the code etc. so that instead of having to review code or have arguments break out over how something should be written, you can just point to a definitive guide beforehand, and avoid the troubles.

I say this, unfortunately, from experience. It has become common in our team for a new developer's first commit to be met with a blasting review, telling them everything they've done wrong, and most of it is capitalisation/whitespace etc. stuff.

[amenghra]

Better yet, replace the style guide with a script (à la go fmt). You'll save everyone time and make the new person's experience a million times more pleasant!

[userbinator]

Not if the new person disagrees or prefers a slightly different style. Reviews at least provide a chance of discussion and a possibility of change. Not everyone wants to work in an authoritarian environment of "do it this way or leave."

[JelteF]

Gofmt, or rustfmt or whatever language fmt are really one of the best things that happened to modern development. Even if you don't agree with the style, which nobody does fully, it's much better than having discussions about style all the time and having to format the code manually. Formatting just happens when you save the file, so you can forget spaces and everything when writing and your code will look fine when you save it.

[dozzie]

> Gofmt, or rustfmt or whatever language fmt are really one of the best things that happened to modern development.

Funny way to state that. There is this formatting tool `indent' for C and C++. It was already well known and rather rarely used back in 2003. Code formatters have not happened to "modern development" by any stretch.