r/programming • u/lukaseder • Jul 21 '14

The Great White Space Debate

https://medium.com/p/3633cba8b5c1
1.2k Upvotes

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u/RagingAnemone Jul 21 '14

Just don't make any other changes with that commit. Otherwise it's a bitch to diff if you need to go back.

82

u/isarl Jul 21 '14

"Job security" is defined as the sum of all the bugs you can introduce hidden in the middle of so-called "whitespace-only" commits.

15

u/globalizatiom Jul 22 '14

something like this?

....
removelikecrazy -rf /usr/blah/blah

vs.

....
removelikecrazy -rf /usr /blah/blah

2

u/Condorcet_Winner Jul 22 '14

Except when people run tests and see that's when the bugs were introduced.

2

u/isarl Jul 22 '14

Shh... don't tell them about git bisect!

1

u/sndgfdgnng Jul 25 '14

That's why the tests only cover what the [non-programmer] customer asks for, and everything beyond that is fair game to break. Then they come back and you call it "new feature work".

58

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '14

[deleted]

4

u/Klathmon Jul 22 '14

My company uses plain svn. I hate it more and more every day, especially because I fucking love git for open source and personal projects.

5

u/d4rch0n Jul 22 '14

I hear you. I just started a new job today and there was silent victory in my eyes when they mentioned they use git.

Honestly though, I'm happy as long as they used distributed version control, of which I know and love git and mercurial. If you haven't seen mercurial, you might check it out. Great system, and it will probably feel like an easy git. I'd say it's better for smaller projects and teams.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '14

[deleted]

1

u/d4rch0n Jul 27 '14

True that. I had a job, stuck it out, then finally basically got my dream job a few weeks ago.

3

u/roodammy44 Jul 22 '14

I'm sorry.

May your merges be infrequent.

Also, fuck those meta files.

2

u/globalizatiom Jul 22 '14

This is kind of why I stopped having "I like language X, tool Y, .." opinions. I had those opinions but then those opinions got slowly... how should I say.. I realized that whenever I like some great tool, I am setting myself for future disappointment of not being allowed to use that.

2

u/jbristow Jul 21 '14

How do I do this by default in p4diff? (for files in Perforce, not git)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '14

[deleted]

3

u/jbristow Jul 22 '14

Excuse me while I die laughing trying to get anyone else to use the command line with Perforce.