

Community Standards (Clojure) - hugoc
http://blog.fogus.me/2010/08/30/community-standards/

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lmkg
How hard is it to throw together an Emacs command that re-styles your
parenthesis? I know the creators of Go went so far as a to make a program that
converts "valid" Go code into "canonical" Go code. Parentheses seem like an
easy problem to solve. If people can re-parenthesize their code with the press
of a button, you can still have the community interoperability without having
to sacrifice inclusiveness of personal eccentricities.

~~~
itgoon
I don't know. I know that other IDEs have such functionality for other
languages. I don't worry too much about the previous developer's style,
because reformatting is a couple of simple keystrokes. As is reformatting it
to another's standard.

I think it is a bit odd that anybody still has this argument.

~~~
fogus
It's not a matter of forming the parens into another style -- that's a solved
problem. The problem is that sticking to individual styles can hurt the
adoption or contributions to a project.

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fogus
The post mentions Clojure only tangentially. The larger point can apply to any
programming language community.

~~~
sprout
Would be good to retitle it. This is a really excellent article and I suspect
there are a lot of people who will skim past any link with Clojure in the
title.

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j_baker
I think Doug Hoyte put it best: "An auxiliary theme of this book, one that
applies to any programming language, is that in programming, style is not
something to pursue directly. Style is necessary only where understanding is
missing."

For instance, as a python programmer, I find it intensely annoying when people
don't follow PEP 8 and might complain about it. But the fact that it's the
most important thing on my mind means that I haven't really understood the
code.

Unless the violations are truly flagrant (such as putting commas in the left
margin rather than after the word), then move on with life. We programmers
have enough to worry about without having to nitpick over others' paren
placement.

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rauljara
The essay itself is a pretty wonderful merging of form and content. At its
very best, form helps to convey content. As seen here.

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falko
Great. Thank you ;-))

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itistoday

      1) You lose credibility (whether its unfounded or not is irrelevant)
      2) People refuse to spend much time looking at your code
    

Over the years I've spent coding I've learned not to judge other coders based
on their preferred style. Often enough I'll encounter really brilliant code
whose style I find aesthetically unappealing (or "non-standard"), and I would
have been worse off if I chose to ignore it. Some people just Think Different,
and that's not always a bad thing.

Conversely, I've learned that prickly people who get red-faced upon
encountering an unfamiliar style are often worth avoiding.

~~~
fogus
I can sympathize completely with your viewpoint, but in my experience it is a
minority one. I tend to value code based on its technical merit as well, but
non-standard formatting can work to distract from the very recognition of its
beauty.

I would not want to disparage anyone their preferred styling. My only point is
that you sacrifice a wider audience by sticking to it.

~~~
technomancy
> I can sympathize completely with your viewpoint, but in my experience it is
> a minority one.

It's much more common in C and descendants, which saw widespread use before
the rise of the Internet.

