[logbiscuitswave]

I once had someone vehemently complain to me about certain style rules in place in a code base saying, “only machines will ever read it, who cares how it looks as long as it works?” As someone who’s deeply passionate about software development it certainly made me look at this person in a different light.

[zelphirkalt]

Always remember: The next person to maintain it could be you.

Often that kind of view (who cares how it looks) is held by people, who leave and leave a mess for others to maintain.

insert Sussman quote about programs being written for others to read first and only last for computers to run here

[dgellow]

It might be a lack of experience. I've seen people reacting like this when they are still very new to programming and feel pressured by the need to learn/adapt to stricter rules. After some time once they become more comfortable they pay more attention to the way something is written.

[sidpatil]

I've worked with people who would scatter literals throughout a codebase because they were too lazy to type out the names of variables and constants. I feel your pain.