Re: Watchpoints

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jun 12, 2007, 14:21 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706121514280.4059@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <19f34abd0706120651m2cfab331te0976eddb479b88c@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Vegard Nossum wrote:

> A lot of kernel developers consider purely-syntactic changes (ie. fixing 
> whitespace issues) to be noisy/disruptive. Therefore, even when such 
> changes are for the better (according to the coding style, etc), they do 
> not usually make it to the "mainline".

FWIW I don't think that there are that many developers who think whitespace fixes are useless. For example, Git recently saw a small series which did nothing _except_ white space fixes.

And I can see the value of it. Just take your home as an example. You are used to a certain order of things there. I, for one, have a routine where I go when coming home, and where I expect my wine bottle to be. If that bottle is somewhere else, I have to find it first. It's just a tiny itch, but a real one.

The same applies to source code: when I am hacking on Git, I expect things in a certain layout, and find my way easily through that. If there are some things I am not used to (yes, even a missing space after an "if"), it takes away my attention briefly from what I want to do. It's just a tiny itch, but a real one.

If tiny itches add up, they become larger ones. And soon you have a real problem.

So, if somebody tells you that code style does not matter, ignore her. She has no clue about how people tick, really.

Ciao, Dscho