Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by harimau777 250 days ago
I'm not opposed to establishing a coding style and using a linter to enforce it.

I'm opposed to doing that without getting buy in from the team. IMHO it's important to figure out whats important to the different developers on your team and finding a set of rules that works for them; as opposed to just adopting something that makes some people happy and tanks other people's productivity.
2 comments
waisbrot 250 days ago
I agree that suddenly adding a formatter to existing code could be disruptive. But how does "buy in from the team" work over time? If you hire someone new and they don't like the format rules, do you stop using the formatter?
link
harimau777 250 days ago
I think it depends on the situation. If it's just not their preference then there's probably no need for a change. However, if it's going to prevent the new person from doing their job then a change is probably justified.
link
maerch 250 days ago
People being prevented from doing their job because of code formatting? In my nearly 20 years of development, that statement was indeed true, but only before the age of formatters. Back then, endless hours were spent on recurring discussions and nitpicky stylistic reviews. The supposed gains were minimal, maybe saving a few seconds parsing a line faster. And if something is really hard to read, adding a prettier-ignore comment above the lines works wonders. The number of times I’ve actually needed it since? Just a handful.

Code style is a Pareto-optimal problem space: what one person finds readable may look like complete chaos to someone else. There’s no objective truth, and that’s why I believe that in a project involving multiple people, spending time on this is largely a waste of time.

link
cheema33 250 days ago
> I'm not opposed to establishing a coding style and using a linter to enforce it.

Linters can enforce code formatting? Indentation and such.

> I'm opposed to doing that without getting buy in from the team.

That is generally a good principle for adopting any tool and not specific to Prettier or any other code formatter.

I have to admit I am somewhat confused about your objections to Prettier in particular.

link