Things not worth fighting for

There are things in the programming world that we spend too much time fighting for. Each programmer does things a certain way. Maybe they got their style from a combination of books from an author they admire, maybe they just like a particular style of programming. No matter what it is, they defend their way religiously, firmly believing that it is the right way.

No one ever won an argument online. At least I never saw it happen. What ever you think is right, doesn't make any sense to the person you are arguing with. Maybe you've been an advocate of Objective C. You thought a programmer that doesn't use it is not a real programmer. Well now there is a eulogy for Objective C and I believe soon it will be nothing but an old memory.

Here are a few fights that still happen that are not worth fighting for.

Tab or Spaces

I use tabs. It is second nature to me. When I work on a project and I see someone checked in code with spaces instead, I don't fix it. Spaces don't break the application. On the contrary if I change the spaces into tabs, I end up breaking the history when comparing code to earlier versions. If everyone uses spaces on the project, I will make the switch and uses spaces. This is just a preference.

Mac or PC.

For everyday use, I don't care what OS is available. The browser is OS agnostic, word processing is, file syncing is. The work can be done in any environment. All major application are available for Mac and PC. Using one or the other is not a lifestyle, they are just tools that allows you to be productive that is all.

Mac, PC, iOS, Android, all the matter is what you do with them. They are not worth fighting for.

Object Oriented Programming vs Functional Programming

I tend to use OOP when working on my own projects. To me it is well organized, and I can easily navigate through a mess. But the truth is, you don't always have full control of your environment. I worked on a project that used functional programming. I couldn't just change the style because I didn't like it. The whole team was using it with ease and I didn't hear a peep of complaint.

The only thing I could do was adjust. And I did. Writing functional code can be just as organized as object oriented.

Programming languages.

I use a LAMP stack for my work but I still use Nodejs for some projects. When I join a django team, I don't convince them to move to PHP, instead I learn python. If you are familiar with one language it is not so hard to pick up another. It is only hard if you specialize in specific frameworks instead learning the language itself.

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There are many more things not worth fighting for in technology. What matters is the final product. As programmers we are all too often caught up in the aesthetics of languages, patterns, terms, and we forget that at the end of day it doesn't matter. Use spaces or tabs and watch the computer not care.

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