Re: Emacs rewrite in a maintainable language

[Tassilo Horn]

Przemysław Wojnowski <address@hidden> writes:

>>> I don't. I have no problem spending time to replace "char const *"
>>> into "const char *". Browsing through a code base that I want to get
>>> familiar with and fixing a small annoyance doesn't sound bad to me.
>>
>> Pointless churn. Find something that fixes an bug, or adds a useful
>> new feature, and work on that. You will find it more rewarding, and
>> other users and developers will find your contribution more helpful.
>
> Refactorings that increase maintainability (like this one) are very
> useful to other developers.
>
> Such changes, even small, accumulate towards something that can be
> called a "maintainable system".  In (wannabe) healthy systems it is
> everyday practice.

OTOH, they reduce the helpfulness version control offers to new and old
developers.  I.e., it's good when "git blame" shows you the last changes
which actually changed the code, and switching "char const *" to "const
char *" or vice versa are no real changes.

In the same vein, it's of course good to have one consistent indentation
style, one consistent style of setting braces, one consistent style of
naming variables, etc.  But I'd suggest to clean up the non-conforming
parts only when you do significant changes in that area anyhow.

Bye,
Tassilo