Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:45:34 -0700 From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.org> To: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.co.uk> Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/share/man/man9 style.9 Message-ID: <20010722154534.C42831@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <750530000.995803248@lobster.originative.co.uk>; from paul@freebsd-services.co.uk on Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 01:00:48PM %2B0100 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0107221746120.24145-100000@besplex.bde.org> <750530000.995803248@lobster.originative.co.uk>
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On Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 01:00:48PM +0100, Paul Richards wrote:
> > Everything is easier to read when it is outdented to column 0 and
> > complicated surrounding context is removed :-). A real example would
> > look more like:
..snip..
>
> That's a little contrived. The first if clause happens to indent to the
> same level as the next line but that's rare in practice.
Blah. Paul *WHY THE HELL* are you starting this pissing contest? You
have been around here long enough to know that is all such style threads
turn into. First you question the formatting of the commit logs and now
style(9). Is this a very boring post-USENIX weekend for you or something?
To answer your question, it doesn't matter if it is contrived or not.
Deterministic, mechanical indenting is a Good Thing. It makes it easy to
write code formatters (indent, emacs style modes, Vim C styles, etc..)
> The first "else if" clause has bad style of it's own, no indenting scheme
> is going to work if you use long function names,
Yes there is an indenting scheme that works with such long function names
-- the one described by style(9).
> good programmers won't do that so defining style based on
For who's definition of "good" programmer? Some "good" programmers
believe strongly long procedure names are good as they are
self-documenting.
> other bad practices won't get us anywhere.
for who's definition of "bad" programmer?
> I'm starting to question whether style should drill down to such a low
> level of detail.
YES! Many have spoken up in style threads that they like having a
rigidly defined style guide. (granted some have said they do not)
> Most of the code in the tree that looks like it's in the BSD style
> doesn't conform completely
So? That does not mean we should not strive for strong conformance.
> and in the end a good programmer knows how to style a piece of code to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
there's that _subjective_ term again
which just reinforces that coding style "goodness" is subjective. We
have something which we've been using for 7+ years, and which no one
totally 100% likes. Thus no one "wins" and everyone equally dislikes it.
That is actually a pretty good score consensus-wise.
> My wife's a copy-editor and she spends all day correcting "style" in
> manuscripts and in publishing determining style is about setting a
> consistent feel, it's not a rigid set of rules; the author has some
> leeway to write the manuscript they way they prefer
What you are very much missing here is in this case, the single author
(or small group of authors) are the only one writing the document, and
the document isn't updated very often after printing. It might be years
(decades even) before the 2nd edition comes out -- if ever. With code we
have a *lot* of people potentially reading and updating a piece of code.
We should not have to make those people spend 15 minutes trying to figure
out how to add/change code so that it is formatted the same way as the
original.
--
-- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org)
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