Classes have started again1 and I’m remembering why I wasn’t doing these posts weekly2. So, instead of thinking of anything substantial to write about, I figured I could just do a listicle. The Internet likes listicles, right?
These are things that I care about out of proportion to how much they actually matter. When I write articles for here, I try to thoroughly justify why you should adopt any give practice. I won’t even try here. These are my pet peeves.
- Inconsistent spacing. Whether around curly braces (
if(x==1){vs.if (x == 1) {), comments (// commentvs.//comment), or commas (1,2vs.1, 2), I would like all code to pick a spacing style and stick with it. Yeah, I have a preferred style3, but reading code in a different style bugs me much less if it’s at least consistent. - Minor typos in comments. I’m not talking about typos that might be confusing. It’s obvious what “traverse in revrse direction” is meant to say, and folks reading quickly might not even notice the typo. But the copy-editor in me cries.
- Inconsistent capitalization. I’m not so strict as to insist that comments all follow the same capitalization conventions, but when helptext has some lines starting with lowercase and some with uppercase, I die a little inside. Ditto for class/function/file/variable names.
If you’re noticing a common thread of my background as an amateur copy-editor, you’re right. If you’re also noticing a lack of anything else, you’re also right. Many of my pet issues (too-long lines, over-complicated expressions, DRY, crediting sources, version numbers, docstrings, correct indentation) I will defend as being actual issues. Honestly I have less of these less-defensible pet peeves than I realised when I started writing this list.
Copy-edit your code, y’all, okay? Okay? Or else I’ll, uh, be sad. I’m not angry, just disappointed.
- Yes, classes started practically in October. That’s a quarter system for yah.
- I don’t have a buffer, y’all. I write, edit, and publish these in around an hour; they’re on whatever topic hit me first when I sit down to start.
- For the record, that style is More Spaces.