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Comment by AlchemistCamp | Hacker News Reader

Prettier makes some obviously stupid choices though. That coupled with their disregard for their users is why I don’t use it.

I switched to Rome (now Biome) after this debacle: https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/840

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Whether they do make obviously stupid choices or not doesn't invalidate the principle.

As to whether they do make obviously stupid choices - I personally don't mind any of their choices (even if I wouldn't have made the same choice myself), and I know I'm not alone in this position, which means that by definition they're not "obviously" stupid. You can disagree with the choices and the trade-offs, sure, that doesn't make it obviously stupid.

So many lives have already been lost in the tabs vs spaces debate, do we want to start this conversation again?

I detailed the reasons at length in the issue thread. It might not be obvious if you haven’t seen the code examples, but once you see it, it’s pretty clear.

I also completely disagree with your reasoning above.

The fact that many people believe or do some thing does not mean that “by definition” that that thing is not obviously stupid. E.g., inhaling glue, smashing things with one’s head, “the secret”, mukbang videos… the list is nearly endless.

Finally, “the principle” behind Prettier is also flawed when taken to the extreme they do. Paraphrasing my final comment on the github issue,

> It can be used to defend literally any styling choices, even ones that deliberately misaligned conditional branches with others at its logical level (much like prettier already is doing on a small scale in the example I referenced).

> Yes human beings are adaptable, but some things are easier to adapt to than others. It's objectively easier to spell Spanish than English, for example. It pays off to have consistency at a deeper level than simply making the same idiosyncratic choices each time an identical situation comes up.

Tienes razon sobre el asunto de que uno puede escribir palabras mas facil en otras lenguas. Pero lo importante en este caso es que la gente encuentran lo que esperan. Si la mayoria de la gente buscan `} else {` sera mejor darles lo que esperan. Posiblemente una investigacion cientifica podia descubrir que `else {` seria mejor para los que ya no se acostumbraron a `} else {`, pero estamos en un mundo lleno de gente que ya se acostumbraron. Pues `} else {` sirve bien, lo mismo que sirve bien usar una lengua familiar aunque otra lengua tiene ventajas.

Translation: You're right on the point that one can spell words more easily in other languages. But the important thing in this case is that people find what they expect. If the majority are looking for `} else {` it's better to give them what they expect. It's possible that a scientific investigation might find that `else {` would be better for those who haven't yet become accustomed to `} else {`, but we're in a world full of people who've already become so accustomed. So `} else {` still works better, just as it works better to use a familiar language even though another language has advantages.

This confuses choosing a more phonetic option among multiple competing options with changing to a completely different language.

"Multiple competing options" ignores that there's a prevalent style already.

https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/840#issuecomment...

Consistency has more value than the subjective advantage of the proposal that you're comparing to the objective advantage of being phonetic. I think the prettier maintainers made the right choice.

There are multiple prevalent styles. The emoji counts on the issue thread you linked to and the number of essentially duplicates make that very clear.

Developer: Makes software with a unique value proposition of "there are no configurations, it is what it is".

Random user: Your software is unacceptable; add an option to my favorite subjective preference!

I wonder, are those people trolling?

People were trying to get the broken behavior fixed. I was more in the camp of simply removing the offending rule. But, contrary to your claim above, they did already have some config options.

Ultimately, the solution is to use Biome or another formatter instead, but many devs have Prettier forced on them at work.

Broken is subjective for this case. Some people like choice A and others want B - neither is broken.

Oh, for sure. If you don't want to live with the decisions from the project whose goal is not letting you make your own decisions, you should use something with a different goal. There is a reason most of those projects grow a bit and then die.

What you don't do is insist the developer adds the option. Even if you feel like the developer is more approachable than your boss.

In the hundreds of people who interacted on that thread, I don’t think a single person insisted that the dev do anything.

It’s a dishonest characterization of the issue thread to imply that it was its nature. People shared discussed the problem with the tool’s behavior, shared examples and motivations.

Prettier’s (IMO wrong) decision was theirs to make but the response was also gratuitously smug.

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