From: David Vallner <david@...>
Date: 2006-10-07T11:57:09+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the reason for this syntax?

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Kevin Olemoh wrote:
> David just because you like a given way of formatting does not mean
> that everyone else should have to use it while they are creating
> something even if they are working with you. =20

It's not about personal preference, it's about accepted conventions.
Sun's *official* style guidelines say camelCase, and { on same line.
Microsoft's *official* style guidelines say PascalCase and { on new
line. I follow the former convention when coding Java, the latter when
coding C#. I snake_case method names for Ruby and Python, never in Java,
I don't write code with camelCase in Ruby either.

I do that precisely because my personal preference doesn't matter.
However, I realise there are people with more inertia using an
environment on the team, who are probably less flexible about that.
That's why I will follow the convention most likely to be agreed upon -
to make my code -less alienating to them-, and not to me. I mean, I
wrote the thing in the first place, and know where to click in an IDE to
move around my code by heart by then, I don't need these basic visual
aids to navigate.

> The points you brought
> up are the reason people need to be using comments in code not a
> reason for the language itself to try and force a method of formatting
> onto its users.=20

I never said anything about language-enforced formatting. Ruby does so
only where required by the semicolon-less syntax, and you just happened
to hit a sore spot of yours that just isn't parseable the way you would
like, period. It's not an arbitrary restriction someone made up because
it looks prettier.

However, personal preference is, in my opinion, not a reason to not
follow convention even if the convention isn't enforced.

> In the real world you speak of people need to actually
> explain themselves when others are going to be reading the code

Explaining themselves comes when it's time for code review. Often, that
time isn't. Also, most of real-life codereading occurs when the original
author has long ran for the hills.

> the formatting of the code is almost entirely secondary.

Obviously, it isn't if you're willing to write reams of debate about how
you object to having to conform to a hard parser restriction.

Also, I take it you haven't tried to use CVS / SVN in a team with people
that run commits through a code beautifier first (generally a Good Idea
for the sake of consistency and general readability - noone likes
terminal-widening doc comments). If two people happen to have to edit
the same source file, and each one wildly repositions the braces, any
and all method signatures (for C-likes) stop matching and all hell
breaks loose as suddenly the file is in conflict in umpty places that
none of those people remember editing. Much groaning and valuable time
lost doing a manual merge follows.

> This is what wikipedia has on the ternary operator
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%3F:
>=20

I'm not particularly interested in random references to your external
brain. Especially if you don't bother to read it.

	"?: is a ternary operator that is part of the syntax for a basic
conditional expression"

C's if is syntax for a conditional statement, not expression.

> (Are you sure you actually now what you are talking about what with
> the overwhelming arrogance that you are exuding and all?)
>=20

Yes. Don't confuse arrogance with being confident in one's skill /
experience. I don't have much of either in absolute values, but I've
already got a fair pile of irksome screwups of which some were relevant
to the topic at hand collected which I've seen, and of course done.

If I was being actually arrogant, I'd say I consider your tone moany,
your nitpicking at trivial issues childish, and your rants ill-informed.

Whoops, looks like I just did. Well, I'm glad the formal pleasantries
have been exchanged.

> The only person who is flaming anyone here is you my friend.
>=20

Why, yes, I am. And?

David Vallner
Troll


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