>> - *Compilers* that are obnoxious about dotting every i and crossing
>> every t are a very different thing from *tools* that enforce style.
>> Running a lint tool, or tying a lint tool to a build process, or to a
>> check-in process -- those things all make perfect sense to me. But
>> yelling at me for indentation when I'm trying to hack?
>
> Do you really write code using arbitrary indentation and other style,
> and then reformat it to the project style when you submit patches?
> I've never noticed anyone doing that. On the contrary, I think I'd
> crank code out faster if I didn't have to keep checking that I'm using
> the correct style for the project I'm working in.
It's just been my experience that over-strict compiler errors get in the way of
the development process because I often need to try things out before they're
finished. For example, back in the bootstrap compiler days, we had Ocaml
configured to fail if there were any dead variables. This was incredibly
frustrating and distracting.
But one alternative we could consider, that would largely have the social
effect you're looking for (enforcing a standard style and eliminating annoying
style differences between projects) would be a tool like gofmt:
http://golang.org/cmd/gofmt/
This is not part of the go compiler, but by shipping a tool with the language
that enforces a particular style, it sends a clear message that this is the
language's official style. And by making the tool useful, it provides a carrot
to use that style. But it doesn't have the danger of interrupting the
edit-compile-run workflow by nagging the user about syntactic nits.
I believe they've also used it as a refactoring tool to help programmers
migrate their code when the language changes, which is a useful trick, too.
You could worry that some projects would still adopt their own style, but a)
there are practical benefits to using the official language style, and b) we
could still set cultural norms about using the official language style. In
practice, I think there would be so much more uniformity of style that it would
probably make non-conformists look silly and stubborn.
Dave
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