Re: Alignment Nazi?

P.S. A Niven-Pournelle Inferno-esque punishment for those who destroy the careful code formatting of others could be to have to maintain FORTRAN 66 code converted from card decks that omitted all non-significant whitespace (one can't arbitrarily muck around with the first 6 columns) to cram more code onto each card. <g>

Al


----- Original Message ----
> From: Al Chou <hotfusionman-/[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:05:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [pragprog] Alignment Nazi?
> 
> Yeah, I agree that if they don't care what the code looks like, they shouldn't 
> change what it looks like.  But having formatting wars between two or more 
> varieties of code Nazis is even a bigger expenditure of time, hence Steve 
> McConnell's recommendation to auto-format the code on checkout to your personal 
> preference and auto-format back to the organization's standard upon checkin.  As 
> I mentioned earlier, I don't think Python was the language he had in mind when 
> he wrote that. 
> 
> As you mention, with modern IDE's and even editors that predate those, it's easy 
> to auto-format code.  What baffles me nowadays is people to whom it never occurs 
> that the editor could auto-indent code for them.  I always shake my head when I 
> hear the space bar being hit several times right after the return key.  A less 
> obvious example of a feature that could help a lot of people but isn't always 
> used is word auto-completion.  It's probably used more often in code editors 
> than in word processors, but given how much more often the latter are used in 
> the universe of computer users, it's almost criminal that the more popular word 
> processors don't do completion by default the way OpenOffice.org does.  I'm 
> always gratified and amazed at how much faster I can type a document in it than 
> in Word, say.
> 
> 
> Al
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Gordon J Milne 
> > To: [email protected]
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:20:21 PM
> > Subject: Re: [pragprog] Alignment Nazi?
> > 
> > Al,
> > 
> > I suppose that means I ain't a big enough Nazi to be an Alignment Nazi.
> > 
> > My personal beef about this topic (in general) is mainly with co-workers 
> > who pay no attention whatsoever to any kind of alignment-for-clarity 
> > that their colleagues might employ to make things easier on their 
> > brains. I fully admit to having a limited brain.
> > 
> > During the past 19 years I have met many developers who don't give a 
> > hoot about how their code looks. However, they usually have the decency 
> > to ensure that code that has been carefully formatted is left that way. 
> > I have only met a handful of developers that don't even care about that. 
> > These people annoy the hell out of me, and they know that too. I work 
> > with one of these people now. He excuses himself by saying his text 
> > editor is the culprit. Frankly, his inattention to detail on checkins is 
> > at fault. This is very easy to get right with modern IDEs.
> > 
> > I think I might start questions about code style the next time I hire 
> > somebody. I'm fed up with working with people that think all that 
> > matters is what the compiler generates.
> > 
> > Hell, we write the code for each other, not the compiler.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > Gordon
> > 
> > Al Chou wrote:
> > > Gordon,
> > > 
> > > I'm sorry, I can't let this one just slide by.  If I were an Alignment Nazi, 
> I 
> > would not let the difficulty of realignment get in the way of a needed rename 
> > refactoring.  I would find a tool to do the desired realignment.  For example, 
> 
> > someone mentioned in this thread that EMACS can do it, IIRC....
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Al
> > > 
> > > 
> > > ----- Original Message ----
> > >> From: Gordon J Milne 
> > >> To: [email protected]
> > >> Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:04:38 PM
> > >> Subject: Re: [pragprog] Alignment Nazi?
> > >>
> > >> Ged,
> > >>
> > >> Personally, I would not care what happened on such a rename operation. 
> > >> It is unlikely, however, that the temperature class would be renamed 
> > >> since it is one of our basic, low-level utility classes. In any event, 
> > >> if such a rename were performed I would expect things to get realigned 
> > >> when someone had reason to delve into that area of the code, otherwise I 
> > >> would not care.
> > >>
> > >> FYI, if I was the person doing the rename, I'd probably realign 
> > >> everything because I'm wired that way. However, I'd probably take the 
> > >> pragmatic road and abort the rename once I saw how many changes in the 
> > >> code base it would produce.
> > >>
> > >> Regards,
> > >>
> > >> Gordon
> > >>
> > >> Ged Byrne wrote:
> > >>> Gorden,
> > >>>
> > >>> My question is what happens if the Temperature class is renamed to
> > >>> something longer?  Do you have to go through all of the classes that
> > >>> declare a Temperature instance and move every single = to maintain
> > >>> alignment?
> > >>>
> > >>> Are you forced to keep names short, so that alignment is easy?  Would
> > >>> you prefer correct alignment over descriptive names?
> > >>>
> > >>> If names aren't kept short, then you start having to scroll sideways
> > >>> in the IDE and word wrap in the printouts.  Is that desirable?
> > >>>
> > >>> I've been working with SQL that uses the same type of alignment
> > >>> scheme, and these are the problems I've been encountering.
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> Ged.
> > >>>
> > >>> On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 11:06 PM, gjmilne64 wrote:
> > >>>> Hi!
> > >>>>
> > >>>> I am an Alignment Nazi. When I see a block of code like this:
> > >>>>
> > >>>>         final int         counts              = result.getCounts();
> > >>>>         final int         periodMicros        = result.getMicros();
> > >>>>         final Rate        rate                = new Rate(new