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Comment by lmm

9 months ago

> I worry that his approach allows a certain kind of programmer to focus on like ... aesthetic, dogmatic uniformity (and the associated unproductivity of making primarily aesthetically-motivated, dogmatic changes rather than enhancements, bugfixes, or things that other coders on a project agree improves maintainability) instead of increasing their skills and familiarity with their craft.

Funny, I find the opposite. In my experience people that are willing to take a "dogmatic" position on code style are those who are able to actually get on with implementing features and bugfixes. It's the ones who think there's a time and place for everything and you need to re-litigate the same debates on every PR who tie themselves in knots getting nothing done.

Do I agree with absolutely everything Martin writes? In principle, no. But I'd far rather work on a codebase and team that agrees to follow his standards (or any similar set of equally rigid standards, as long as they weren't insane) than one that doesn't.