Leaving aside your usual "humour", you are once again setting up a total strawman. Nicola did not say that maintenance should be as much fun as writing new code, nor did he propose rewriting anything. He made a very specific claim - that contributing to the Clojure codebase is much less pleasant than it could be, not because the indentation style is unusual but because it is inconsistent.
Since he has a long history of writing very high quality patches for Clojure whereas you, as far as I can tell, have never written any, means that his opinion holds a lot more weight in this discussion, for me at least. On 20 July 2015 at 14:45, Luc Prefontaine <lprefonta...@softaddicts.ca> wrote: > > --- advanced warning: the following section contains a lethal form of > irony, please skip it if your health condition does not tolerate irony --- > > Sure and I never maintained code written by others in 30 years... Never > wrote patches, never had to comply with odd indentation habits. > I am an absolute newbie on that subject. > > I always write new code and leave maintenance to other less fortunate > people. > > --- end of ironic section --- > > I agree with you. Totally. > > Maintenance has never been funnier than new dev and will never be. > > Day to day maintenance specifically is a pain in the ass. > > Preemptive rewrites as part of maintenance is doable when the code reaches > an unbearable state > but someone in charge has to call the shots. > > I had numerous discussions about rewriting in the last few decades and yes > patch consistency is always brought forward. > > The driving factors around a decision like this are: the life expectancy > of the code vs it's complexity vs maintenance cost and agility vs risks > involved in a rewrite vs budget vs accumulated knowledge. > > The maintainer's pain is not the only factor taken into account and often > not the most important. > > That's the harsh reality of life. > > Ideally we would always write new stuff and trash code every 2/3 years to > keep our mood at its peak. > > Life is not like that. Sorry :) > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Jul 20, 2015, at 08:14, Nicola Mometto <brobro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > I take it you have never worked on a patch for clojure. > > I have, and I can tell you that it's not the indentation style the > > issue -- everybody likes his own and it's definitely in the > > maintainer's rights to chose what indentation style should be used and > > for contributors to adapt, I don't have a problem with that. > > I have a problem with the fact that the indentation style is not > > consistent even between lines of the same method, tabs and spaces are > > mixed everywhere -- for every non trivial patch I submit I have to > > spend non trivial amounts of time to reindent my code using spaces or > > tabs where appropriate to be consistent with the surrounding code and > > making sure I don't accidentally commit whitespace changes in my > > patches. > > It's certainly not the biggest issue (not even close to it) in the > > contributing process, but it definitely is an issue and it doesn't > > help making the overall contributing experience a pleasant one, or one > > would want to repeat. > > > > And the claim that no indentation fix can happen to avoid breaking > > existing patches in jira is frankly laughable. With the amount of time > > that usually passes between the writing of a patch and its application > > to the code base, a lot of them already need to be rebased/rewritten > > to apply cleanly, often multiple times. > > > > On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 5:44 PM, Luc Prefontaine > > <lprefonta...@softaddicts.ca> wrote: > >> Sure, indentation is what gets the code running on metal :)) > >> > >> Not ranting here, just my abs dying from the pain as I laugh :)) > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > > Groups "Clojure" group. > > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with > your first post. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > > For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en > > --- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with > your first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Clojure" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. 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