So Angry (Programming Semantics)

Ugh I'm fresh out of uni at this company where I work with this guy, who has no degree. He's stuck here cause nobody else will employ him, so he tries to take it out on me. Here's what makes me mad.

Tabs vs. Spaces

When I got here I indented everything with tabs. Nuff said.

The guy said, Nooo, my tab width is different, this is coming out wrong. So I changed to space based indenting. Beautiful. Looks the same in every bit of software, everywhere. The end. Not.

He says Noooo, uh, Nooooo (no reason given). He says he's written his own coding standards everyone else has to stick to (Note, NOT my manager, just my equal in a room where I have a separate manager who manages both of us), so I have to use tabs...

Now hold the phone, I started off using tabs, why was that wrong....

Here we are, he wants me (wait for it) to use tabs to indent lines, then spaces to line up equals signs in variables. So for some of them this means sitting there and typing out space after space by hand. For god's sake!!

Is it too much to ask that I just use tabs OR spaces, but not zenlike combinations of the two that are designed to make me need to put in spaces by hand? Cause I don't want to put in tabs. Or spaces. I wanna code something!

(Yes this guy is ALWAYS going on about tiny little cosmetic details)

It's easy!

Use TABs for INDENTING.
SPACES for ALIGNING.

Tab size independent formatting

How are you supposed to get something like VI to support that constant changing of heart? I don't want 'coding' to become "space-space-space-space-space-space-space-space".

You can set VI to do a hard tab on press of the tab key. Or spaces. But not both in certain times and if there is a full moon. Gee I remember when code was about producing some machine instructions that did something

What a bunch of hooey. Of all the "standards" to obsess about, tabs vs spaces is the least of my concerns as a developer...

Me, I'd take out the spaces and the tabs and totally make up my own coding standards, and see if I could give this guy an aneurysm or something.

-Ghoti

I'd log in as him and "re-arrange" all of his code using indents, tabs and spaces in completely random and creative ways.


.

Coding standards are a good thing, and you never appreciate how good until you're tasked with unravelling the spaghetti of somebody who doesn't agree.

Going overboard with standards is a bad thing. It hurts productivity and makes your coders grind their teeth too much.

Being unemployable as a coder just because you don't have a stupid piece of paper is a very bad thing. Been there, done that, sucks hard.

Amen to you and Ghoti and Paolo

The guy is a really bad people person. I've never felt as stupid as since I took this job, he is really good at looking down at you, and talking to you like you're a baby. The other coder working there agrees with me. The problem is it's just me and the other fine coder, him, and the manager who is busy managing. So pretty much he acts like he runs the place cause he's been there 18 months and me only 6. And look what he's correcting me on. Tabs and spaces. Paolo is right, let's fuss about something that matters

I'm not saying coding standards don't matter, but let's face it: if you do stick to either tabs OR spaces in a piece of code, it will look neat and well laid out. And if you use spaces, it'll even look right in all the software in the world. Result. Now get back to doing something useful

Get a good pretty printer and require everone to run their code through the pretty printer before checking the code in cvs or your favorite sorce code version control system. Then everyone can code in whatever combination of tabs and spaces they want, and still ahve the code come out consistent.

You can even have your favorite co-worker tweak the config file to reflect his favorite tabbing style.

Yeah, run a global search and replace: all tabs and spaces become newlines.

Stick that in your compiler and smoke it!

I like coding standards.. most of all, documentation. Makes for a slower start, but it saves money in the end.

And I just got hired as a hack coder. Never went to school for it and now I'm unravelling other peoples' messy and obtuse code.

I'm not even going to get into the school thing -- long story short, I spend more time aggravated by beauracracy and teachers who focus on grades rather than learning.

WTF? That's anal!

Tell that anal crevice to shut the @#$% up!

Ok maybe not good advice.

Um, but it's still anal. One of the points of coding standards is to increase productivity--this does anything but that because everyone has their own style. It's like a religion to a degree. Tell him to get stuffed! No wait that's bad advice too...

I DO understand where he's coming from, absolutely. But if two people insist on using different tab sizes, you have to either convert to spaces or decide on a damn tab size.

If you have access to a decent IDE, KDevelop(Gideon) or MSVC, they can all do 'reformat source'. I prefer KDevelop's method of this since (as being open source) it has so many configuration options for the autoformat that you can get almost any style you demand.

This means you dont need to spend 25 minutes reformatting your code to match the standard-of-the-week, and can write it how you choose, then reformat it to whatever is required.

-Adam

I had a problem child like this once too - since whitespace doesn't matter in languages like C, I logged in as him and turned an entire page of code into a sign saying 'GO F*CK YOURSELF'.

Best hour of non-paid OT I ever invested.

a secondary method is to make variables with interesting names like my_coworker_sucks_arse

which becomes lots of fun because your code tells you a little story later on in the process

Siggy.

(Who doesn't work in IT anymore because it sucks great big hairy dogballs)

Hey, there you go, use a better IDE that can reformat. What's that? VI can't do that?

neener neener!

Siggy: ROFLMAO