[petsc-dev] I hate this one

[Matthew Knepley]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Jed Brown <jedbrown at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 9:04 AM, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> There is no getting over this. This is exactly why people hate these
>>> standards. Prescribing a few, coarse
>>> features is fine and improves readability. Specifying the tiniest
>>> details is senseless and intrusive fascism.
>>>
>>
>> Uniform code means that we don't have to "look around" to find what style
>> is being used in that source file. It also means that we can more easily
>> write and verify scripts that manipulate the source. Most mature projects
>> have coding guidelines that specify this stuff. PETSc had an informal
>> guideline that almost everyone except you followed. Yes, we can read the
>> code either way, but visual consistency is good. There are many good places
>> for personal expression; source code formatting on a communal project is
>> not one of them.
>>
>
> Again, there are limits to everything, and this surpasses the useful limit
> to this kind of specification. This is not personal expression, this
> is ease of reading.
>

Also, judging by the ENORMOUS number of source code changes, "everyone" was
not following the informal guidelines.

   Matt


>    Matt
>
> --
> What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
> experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
> experiments lead.
> -- Norbert Wiener
>



-- 
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
experiments lead.
-- Norbert Wiener
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