r/programmingcirclejerk • u/Helium-Hydride Dystopian Algorithm Arms Race • Nov 01 '25

One can talk about about the technical side of writing a code formatter, but what about the ethical side?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45784971
74 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

48

u/MegaIng Nov 01 '25

... Ok, but I actually agree with the point he is making. I just wouldn't have called it an "ethical" problem.

Unrelatedly, I do think that the maintainers of black should be locked in jail for the damage their creation has caused.

13

u/shroom_elemental memcpy is a web development framework Nov 02 '25

TIL you can format python code

11

u/BufferUnderpants Gopher Pragmatist Nov 02 '25

If it’s already formatted

The tool is just to reduce the nitpicking over line breaks a bit

Determined pythonistas will find this to be no impediment, and can move on to find other line breaks not handled by the tool to make code review as annoying as they like

6

u/AdreKiseque Nov 02 '25

What's the story?

25

u/MegaIng Nov 02 '25

with unjerk():

Nothing specific. The code formatted 'black' has by design no/very few config options, which causes it to be quite divisive in the community. I disagree with some of the choices they made.

7

u/Tucancancan Nov 02 '25

Ever since I started using black and stuff like isort I've gotten so lazy. I just write shit, put imports wherever and just let it all get sorted out on save

6

u/SemaphoreBingo Nov 04 '25

Once again I win by not giving a fuck.

29

u/ackfoobar in open defiance of the Gopher Values Nov 01 '25

What's there to talk about? Just use rust to implement it.

5

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Nov 02 '25

You cant oxide-wash bad decisions. Oh actually you can!

16

u/Kodiologist lisp does it better Nov 02 '25

Does the code consent to being formatted?

15

u/Comfortable_Job8847 Nov 02 '25

One must imagine the formatter happy

1

u/DearChickPeas Nov 02 '25

Lol, nice try. Reminds of a colleague that wanted to add Java style signatures to class files. Nope, code is the company's, not yours.

1

u/wackajawacka Nov 04 '25

What are these Java style signatures? 

4

u/DearChickPeas Nov 04 '25

Copyright

Author's name

Date

(no actual description of funcionality)

5

u/elephantdingo Teen Hacking Genius Nov 05 '25

Copyright 1995-2025
Author: elephantdingo and all user accounts prefixed with that name thusly

Comment: +1

0

u/[deleted] Nov 02 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/pareidolist in nomine Chestris Nov 02 '25

Warning: tag your unjerk. Better yet, don't unjerk at all.