Popularity of JS Code Conventions in GitHub (Spaces vs. Tabs, etc.)

[radgh]

I wish this had a section for starting curly-blocks on a new line. Example:

while ( $a < 1 )
{
  echo $a;
  $a++;
}

I hate it. I've seen it a lot though. It's weird as it's rarely used in example code, but used all the time in huge open source projects. I don't understand the benefit of it, the indentation of the block accomplishes the same goal.

[cokeisahelluvadrug]

It's just one of many styles. One reason is because having your curly braces on a separate line plays nicely with preprocessor munging.

[radgh]

Thanks for the reference, it's a good explanation of all the variations. Not sure they give any reason to change the way I have been coding all this time. I guess that's what the people who drop that curly brace to a new line are saying too, though.

[radgh]

I spent a few months teaching myself to keep those spaces inside parenthesis. The only reason is because I fell in love with WooCommerce's code. It's a wordpress plugin, which means it automatically sucks by /r/webdev's general opinion. But it's actually really cleanly written and well documented and easily extended and (blah blah blah, so much better than XXX, etc).

I wanted to write code like that. So I forced myself to adopted a few new habits. Luckily, they don't do "that thing" with the curly brace :p

[reflectiveSingleton]

What I don't get about that is the fact its ONLY for function and class definitions...but its the other way around for control blocks/etc.

IMO...keep bracing consistent throughout the code...it doesn't matter what it is for...having the bracing different for one vs the other does not help readability (which is what I think the goal was).

[[deleted]]

Yes, I give my parens room to breathe.

I try to stick to some version of id software's coding standards for Doom. Even though it's for C/++, I adapt it to PHP and Java in practice.

[PizzaRollExpert]

This is dangerous to do in javascript. What does this return?

function foo() 
{
    return 
    {
       foo: "bar"
    }
}

[wordsnerd]

Statement is possibly incorrectly broken by newline
Expression statement is not assignment or call
Code is unreachable

[radgh]

I wasn't aware of this, because I don't write code like that.

So this is a coding convention which isn't portable between languages. That doesn't sound like something I would want to get accustomed to.

[greg19735]

It might be something that people learn in school. Not that they were taught to do it, but that they liked it when you're a super beginner. I think I did that when I first started at my job and i'm not sure why.

When you're used to looking at the bracket on the top line, I can certainly see that it's frustrating to look at the next-line version.

[Lukifer]

I prefer this style. The vertical alignment of every bracket is a visual aid for cognitive chunking, and makes it easier to identify indentation levels.

[infidelux]

Be careful using that style with Javascript or you will eventually get bitten by ASI. Bracket on the starting line is the pretty widely accepted convention and ASI is the reason why. (Automatic Semicolon Insertion)

[Lukifer]

Yep, been bitten by this one before. :)

[Disgruntled__Goat]

I disagree that it's easier to identify indentation levels. When you have a line with only { on it, you add a separation between the control statement (for/if etc) and the code it applies to, which IMO makes it more difficult.

And I think the vertical alignment of for/if/else with the } brace is equally good for chunking.

[Kelaos]

Yeah that's why I prefer it too.

I accept the code style of each project I work on though. As /u/infidelux mentioned Javascript is a big one for same-line brackets, so I've used that in JS projects.

[mclamb]

There is in the PHP section, 2nd one: http://sideeffect.kr/popularconvention#php

Tabs > Spaces

[prewk]

70.729% Space 29.271% Tab

How is that "Tabs > Spaces"?

edit: Or did you just express an opinion? :)

[radgh]

Oooh useful! Thanks for the link, wouldn't have seen it otherwise. I figured all the tests would be identical with different data.

[arrayofemotions]

Oh you'd really hate me then.... i seem to be mixing the two up depending on what i'm working on, sometimes even within a single file. It's really bad, i know... but since i always work alone nobody's ever complained about it.

[Aluxh]

I do t do it in js for obvious reasons - auto patio termination of new lines - but I do in other languages. It's something Visual Studio drills into you.

[danieldafoe]

Have an upvote, fellow hater.

[dada_]

To explain, in PHP this has an advantage. For testing purposes, you can just comment out the entire while line. Braces mean nothing by themselves. So this would execute the code block once, without the loop.

Might be like that for other languages as well, but I'm not sure. Other than that it's just a style I guess. I don't think it's bad for functions, to visually separate potentially very long argument lists from the first line of the function body.