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Peter Kim Frank
Peter Kim Frank Subscriber

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What is your pettiest programming-related opinion?

What is the most meaningless, silly, un-important programming-related opinion that you'll just continue to defend?

We're all familiar with Tabs vs. Spaces...

But what are some other pointless fights that you're always willing to fight about?

Top comments (67)

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Dan Keefe

Anyone who writes more efficient code than me is pretentious.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

πŸ˜„πŸ˜„πŸ˜„

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Forest Hoffman • Edited

This gonna be good GIF

WordPress is an over-complicated and out-dated framework that shouldn't be used for anything more complex than a plain-text blog.

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Francisco Quintero πŸ‡¨πŸ‡΄

😱 I'm not going to discuss but gonna tell you're not 100% correct. ✌🏽

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Forest Hoffman

I see what you did there :D

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

What a wholesome community πŸ€—

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Nikola Stojaković

I don't agree it's overcomplicated but it definitely should be used only for the blogs and small shops in my opinion. For everything bigger it quickly becomes a disaster.

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Mazen Touati

BloodPress

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Forest Hoffman

That sounds so metal 🀘

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Simo

CSS-in-JS is a mess, framework or not.

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Sloan, the sloth mascot
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Zach Rosenberger

What makes styled-components garbage?

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aleksandrhovhannisyan profile image
Aleksandr Hovhannisyan

Because anything you can do in styled-components you can also do in plain CSS stylesheets + JS, using proper class names. You can even pass props and conditionally apply different class names.

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Zach Rosenberger

Yes, the same goal can be achieved with plain CSS stylesheets + JS, but I don't see why that makes styled-components garbage. I suppose it comes down to preference for minor improvements with one option for styling over another.

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aleksandrhovhannisyan profile image
Aleksandr Hovhannisyan

It's trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.

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andrewbrown profile image
Andrew Brown πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

But seriously. use spaces.

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OJordan

indent with tabs align with spaces dmitryfrank.com/articles/indent_wi...

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v6 profile image
πŸ¦„N BπŸ›‘ • Edited

Tabs and spaces?
Have you learned nothing from American "politics" or Twitter?
Compromise is weakness AND WEAKNESS IS DEATH!

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Sdu

Just make your IDE to use space characters when you press tab. Done, everybody wins

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CamDHall

I get the argument for spaces and all, but as someone who has vision problems 2-space indention makes my life way more difficult. I mean I'm not against adjusting my own workspace to accommodate the rest of them team since I'm the only person who has several vision impairments, but I'm honestly still not convinced the difference justifies the extra work.

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Andrew Brown πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

The heading of this article is petty opinions, so there is no justification.

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elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

You may think Tabs vs. Spaces is a petty opinion, until you realize that using tabs makes a world of difference for visually impaired people.

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Felix Terkhorn

Never thought of this. I have a little bit of trouble with my eyesight and use very large font sizes (22+). Interested to try this πŸ˜‰

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Jason C. McDonald • Edited

Any language is more suitable to a task than Javascript.

(It's only partially objective. I have technical reasons for my hatred of Javascript, but I try to accept that it has uses. I'd just sooner change careers than use Javascript in any measurable amount.)

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Bosley • Edited

I am of the personal opinion that JS is hot garbage.

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Nicolus • Edited

I think that's the consensus.
I mean Javascript is the only language that's so bad that both Google and Microsoft had to create other languages that transpile to it (with Dart and Typescript) to avoid writing javascript.

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Yufan Lou

OTOH, JavaScript may be the closest to Lisp an Algol descendant gets.

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Igor Irianto • Edited

But developers who use spaces make more money.
stackoverflow.blog/2017/06/15/deve...

tab-space

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andrewbrown profile image
Andrew Brown πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

The creator of Python said if he had to go back in time he would have made 2 space mandatory to stop this space vs tabs wars.

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elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks • Edited

Guido van Rossum prefers tabs [1].

I think putting any kind of semantics in things you cannot print is a big mistake. This includes newlines like used in JavaScript.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

lol

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited
  • TypeScript is a righteous dynamic programming wrapper. Every dynamic programming languages should follow TypeScript's example.
  • Password fields do not ever need to be masked.
  • Writing password on a paper is safer than using password manager.
  • 2FA / MFA are good password policies.
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rhymes

We do not need so many programming languages. We do not need so many frameworks.

How many times are we going to "re-implement" the same function to read a file in memory or to send a HTTP message over the wire or to display a button with text that does something on click? πŸ‘€

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Craig McIlwrath

Maybe no individual needs all these options, but not everyone will agree on which style of language/framework is the best. It's a matter of taste, so I think it's great that we have many to choose from.

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rhymes

I agree there's value in having so much R&D going on from multiple communities, but the question is "What is your pettiest programming related opinion" so I thought this qualified.

I believe WASI has the potential to change things down the line. We can all keep the languages we want, but at least we can stop writing basic functionality like "write a synchronous HTTP/2 server". So many replicated man hours in that.

Also, imagine how better in quality and in regards to security vulnerabilities if most languages were built on the same building blocks.

There's also the counter argument of centralizing vulnerabilities but hey, I didn't think this through :D

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Claudio Davi

swtich statements have no real use case that could not be implemented using other simpler features of the language.

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Sophie The Lionhart

I will die on this hill with you. Back to back, mini gun aiming down the hill, mowing down anything that comes our way except food delivery.

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Claudio Davi

have you ever had a legit use case for switch?

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Sophie The Lionhart

I mean I think in finite lists they can have some application. Think like cardinal directions(Noth, East, South, West), basically TRUE Enums, absolutely finite ones. They can be useful sometimes in those cases. You could in theory use a strategy pattern or something even then, and be a more robust solution but it could be seen as over-engineering. If you MUST use one or have a case like above, I always like to throw an exception in the default case. If it shouldn't occur and does, I for sure want to know about it, and I don't want something weak like it being logged. I want it to be a mini-crisis.

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craigmc08 profile image
Craig McIlwrath

Following that logic, there is no use case for a for loop.

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Claudio Davi

But really, can you give me a legit use case?
I cannot think of one single thing that is not a bad pattern switch(true) or could not be solved with an if and early return.

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Simon Landry

Switch cases are syntactic sugar for writing repetitive if and else if statements, not a language feature. Just like the for loop, you could write a while loop that does exactly the same thing.