<commit_before>---

layout: essay

type: essay

title: Triviality and Practicality
date: 2016-09-12

labels:

  - Coding standards

  - Code Quality Tools

  - Style Guides

---

<blockquote><img class="ui medium left floated image" src="../images/xkcd1695.png"><i>Excerpt from <a href="http://xkcd.com/1695/">xkcd #1695</a> by <NAME>.</i></blockquote>

As a former copyeditor, I'm prone to attention to detail, but I try to avoid being punctilious. Most supposed grammar “rules” in English – at least those that people frequently get “wrong” – are actually stylistic choices, and often questionable choices at that. 

So while it was, I’ll admit, particularly frustrating to enforce Associate Press style when it went against my own years-entrenched writing habits, I appreciated that the rules of AP style were particularly suited to their own medium.

So too I try to find ways to appreciate the reasoning behind coding styles that I’m not used to. Even when they ask me to use two- or four-spaced indents, instead of three.

# Form and function

It has been suggested (by Prof. <NAME>, among others) that coding standards can help you learn a programming language. But I'd go a step further in saying coding standards can teach you how to write programs.<commit_msg>Update Triviality-and-Practicality.md<commit_after>---

layout: essay

type: essay

title: Triviality and Practicality
date: 2016-09-22

labels:

  - Coding standards

  - Code Quality Tools

  - Style Guides

---

<blockquote><img class="ui medium left floated image" src="../images/xkcd1695.png"><i>Excerpt from <a href="http://xkcd.com/1695/">xkcd #1695</a> by <NAME>.</i></blockquote>

As a former copyeditor, I'm prone to attention to detail, but I try to avoid being punctilious. Most supposed grammar “rules” in English – at least those that people frequently get “wrong” – are actually stylistic choices, and often questionable choices at that. 

So while it was, I’ll admit, particularly frustrating to enforce Associate Press style when it went against my own years-entrenched writing habits, I appreciated that the rules of AP style were particularly suited to their own medium.

So too I try to find ways to appreciate the reasoning behind coding styles that I’m not used to. Even when they ask me to use two- or four-spaced indents, instead of three.

# Form and function

It has been suggested (by Prof. <NAME>, among others) that coding standards can help you learn a programming language. But I'd go a step further in saying coding standards can teach you how to write programs.
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