"louse up" is british slang for screw up. I thought it was apt, what with the term "bug" being related :P
Some formatting (most, really) can be used with care to aid readability. Screwing up indents is not generally one of them. Nor is re-ordering the import list, or switching between same-line open bracing and own-line open bracing. The usual custom formatting that actually helps, as far as my experience goes, is spacing (which is different from indenting, and could for example involve lining up certain variables so it looks table-like), and deciding if, and where, you should line-break a long statement. As long as there's a case to be made that giving the developers a choice is useful, I'm all for NOT specifying, or at least specifying, along with the rule, that breaking the rule won't actually cause a warning. It's still a good thing to give automated tools a baseline rule, so that they don't all have to come up with their own rules. On Sep 20, 4:40 pm, Josh Berry <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Reinier Zwitserloot > <[email protected]>wrote: > > > I have no idea how any of this is related to giving programmers the > > ability to bicker endlessly about pointless trivialities such as tabs. > > v spaces, and/or the strange notion that giving programmers the > > ability to louse up their indents is more important than generating > > useful and localized error messages when there are syntax errors. > > I'm guessing it is a typo, but there is a very funny mental image of adding > a specific bug to your code by throwing parasites into your indents. :) > > My contention is simply that formatting should be a tool used for > readability. If you only format code because your language demands it, you > likely aren't formatting it to be read by a person. If you never add any > white space because you just don't see the point, you are likely not using > enough. I don't think this is unique to programming. > > And I completely reject the idea that programs are not meant to be read by > people. I have lost the delusion that others will read my code; however, > when I come back to try to understand what I was trying to do again later, I > want that to be as pleasant an experience as possible. :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
