I may be unusual in a way I treat my profession and care about my professional output (the code I write), and I take both very seriously.

There's a quote from Steve Jobs (or maybe his carpenter father):

    “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

When you say "Don't worry about the formatting", what you're saying is "use a piece of plywood on the back," and I'm just not going to do that.

▲ iainmerrick 3 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think we'll ever fully agree, but I'd just like to clarify that I value that kind of craftsmanship too!

I just honestly believe that if you fully automate the formatting, the results are better than if you do it painstakingly by hand; better by virtue of being more consistent. It's using the right tool for the job.

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tacitusarc 3 days ago | parent [-]

Did you read the example pietnas gave? The changed formatting ruined the communicative intent of his code. Formatters do that a lot, and it makes the code unambiguously worse.

I don’t really care about whether the back is plywood or whatever. I don’t know how to write plywood code. I do care about creating clear, readable code that communicates my intent. Sometimes formatters help with that. Often they hinder, as they reflect the arbitrary aesthetic preferences of their creators.

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iainmerrick 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't see "pietnas" anywhere; do you mean the "important_numbers" example from maratc?

If so, I think a trailing comma is the correct fix, as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45168308

In this case I think the trailing comma is an improvement, so the formatter is steering you towards a better overall solution. However, even if you dislike the trailing comma, it's more important for the formatting to be consistent and robust, so I still think it's better to work within the limitations of the formatter.

	▲	tacitusarc 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I honestly have no idea where I read pietnas. The comment you identified was the one I was referring to. I care about consistency, but not foolishly so. I suppose an important question is: under what circumstances is consistency undesirable? I believe that consistency is not an end goal, but a means to achieve clear communication. When being consistent results in less clarity, it should be abandoned in favor of more effective communication.