rustfmt makes me sad. So do the official Rust and Servo style guides.

The whitespace style they mandate ("column align all the things!") is wildly impractical.

I used to use this exact same style myself, many years ago, but gave it up when I saw how many problems it caused. I'll never go back to this kind of column-aligned formatting.

Here's an example from the rustfmt source code:

    let mut rewrites = try_opt!(subexpr_list.iter()
                                            .rev()
                                            .map(|e| {
                                                rewrite_chain_expr(e,
                                                                   total_span,
                                                                   context,
                                                                   max_width,
                                                                   indent)
                                            })
                                            .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>());

Here's how I would format that code instead:

    let mut rewrites = try_opt!(
        subexpr_list
            .iter()
            .rev()
            .map( |e| {
                rewrite_chain_expr( e, total_span, context, max_width, indent )
            })
            .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>()
    );

Or, perhaps if the variable names in the rewrite_chain_expr() call were a little longer, like this:

    let mut rewrites = try_opt!(
        subexpr_list
            .iter()
            .rev()
            .map( |e| {
                rewrite_chain_expr(
                    e,
                    total_span,
                    context,
                    max_width,
                    indent
                )
            })
            .collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>()
    );

Either way, the difference is that I use indentation everywhere that the rustfmt style uses column alignment.

This kind of indentation-based style has numerous advantages over a column-aligned style. I wrote about this at some length previously, so rather than repeat the details, here are my previous comments for anyone who is curious about the rationale for this indentation style:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10206860

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469713

Anyway, it isn't the rustfmt style itself that makes me sad.

It's the presumption behind these kind of rigid code reformatters. The bottom line seems to be this collection of notions:

1. Consistent code formatting and whitespace style is vitally important. So important that an automated tool is required to insure that there are no variations in formatting.

2. The exact details of how code is formatted don't matter much. Any formatting style is about as good as any other, as long it is 100% consistent within a project (or language, or whatever). A professional programmer should just find out what the standard is and follow it.

3. There is nothing new to be learned in formatting style. The way we've always done it is good enough, and as good as any other. (See #2.) If you have new and different ideas about whitespace, they are unhelpful and unwelcome. Stop bikeshedding!

And that is what makes me sad.