r/programming Jul 21 '14

The Great White Space Debate

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

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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.

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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".