On Wednesday, October 02, 2013 10:38:10 qznc wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 October 2013 at 03:28:59 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
> 
> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, October 02, 2013 03:19:19 Jesse Phillips wrote:
> >> For me, if the program didn't format brackets on the same line
> >> I
> >> wouldn't use it. If you start making things configurable, may
> >> as
> >> well improve indent's support for D.
> > 
> > Whereas I'd hate to have to write code that didn't have braces
> > on their own
> > line. It's far better for us both to be able to write code the
> > way that we
> > want than try and force standard formatting rules of some kind.
> > IMHO, they add
> > little to no value and definitely make coding less enjoyable.
> 
> My vision: Jonathan checks out Jesses code to fix a bug. On opening the file his editor automatically reformats to braces-on-own-line. When committing the fix, a pre-commit hook reformats to the project-specific style braces-on-same-line. Everybody is happy. :)

Personally, I don't think that that's particularly realistic, but it's far from the first time that someone has suggested that sort of thing. And giving the inherent flaws in code formatters, I think that this sort of thing is doomed to failure.

> Of course, there are edge cases, where automatic formatting should be broken. However, I think we should let them be and adapt. I also add code sometimes, just to remove a compiler warning like "unused argument". Likewise, I am fine with minor noise in exchange for consistent styling like described above.

Whereas I care way more about being able to format code the way I want than I do about consistent styling.

But code formatting is arguably very much a flamebait topic.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Wednesday, 2 October 2013 at 01:19:21 UTC, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> For me, if the program didn't format brackets on the same line I wouldn't use it.

I'm guessing you don't use druntime or phobos then :p

On 2013-10-01 19:32:05 +0000, qznc said:

> On Sunday, 29 September 2013 at 07:49:21 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> I confess that I don't understand why so many people are fixated on having a
>> standard style, particularly when it's very, very clear that most everyone
>> disagrees on what counts as good style. What little we have in terms of official
>> style guidlelines for D can be found here: http//:dlang.org/dstyle.html
> 
> I think nowadays programmers expect their language to come with more opinion and best practices. In contrast, the C++ world is too fragmented for consistent advice.
> 
> I believe, the best solution would be to include an auto-formatter (like go fmt), so people can simply reformat the code before and after editing.

You could also store the code not as text but as a datastructure like a parse tree. Then the editing environment is free to handle this information the way it wants...

On Sunday, 29 September 2013 at 07:13:26 UTC, Stefan Larsson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have started my journey to learn D after using C/C++ and Python for many years. I am studying the book "The D-Programming Language" by Andrei Alexandrescu and I have tried to search the D-newsgroups for proper advice without success and I am humbly seeking enlightenment in the following topics...

When i first started using D i found the two biggest barriers to entry were UFCS and D's Template syntax. Luckily i've covered both on my blog to give newcomers a quick leg up. Andrei's book is great and very thorough but without the two points above being explained fully the first half can be confusing.

http://nomad.so/2013/07/templates-in-d-explained/
http://nomad.so/2013/08/alternative-function-syntax-in-d/

These are explained later in the book but examples use them long before they are covered.