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by throw45524947 250 days ago
I've recently worked for a company that had no linter and no formatter. It was Java backend, but we have those tools too :) My first PR received 70 comments, 98% was nit-picking. Things like "Rename `MyDomainEntity source` to `MyDomainEntity myDomainEntity`" (it was a MapStruct mapper). I was also asked to remove a simple parent class that I used (in tests!) to reduce duplicated code, something like `MyNewFeatureBaseTest`, because Create, Get, Update, Patch, Delete test classes where sharing some functionalitites.

They fired me during the trial period after this PR.

Before this experience I was also "let's follow conventions even if they are bad", but now that I saw this argument applied so blindly against me, where I wasn't even allowed to use a common class to avoid duplicated code, I don't know, it just feels wrong.

3 weeks later and I'm still unsure if I was really wrong or just being gaslighted. I get conventions like "we split tests in create, get, etc. classes" or "the type of the incoming payload must be called `SomeEntityInput` and the output must be called `SomeEntityOutput`", but 70 comments? And you want me to duplicate code because that's what you did until now, "because conventions"?

1 comments

I am sorry for your experience but I do agree with you, the conventions you were dealing with are bad. It is preferable to avoid conventions that can't be statically enforced specifically to avoid this kind of scenario you are describing.