The 100% Correct Coding Style Guide

Every developer has an opinion on code formatting and style. Tabs or spaces? Allman or K&R braces? 80 character line limit or 120? These debates have raged for decades, and they show no signs of stopping.

It‘s a heated topic because it feels like there should be One Right Way to do things. With all the precision and logic that goes into writing good code, shouldn‘t there also be a precise, logical answer for what that code should look like?

As a long-time full-stack developer who has worked on codebases of all shapes and sizes, I‘m here to tell you the truth: there is no "100% correct" code style. The right answer depends on the language, the tools, the team, and the project. And even then, the specific details matter far less than you might think.

The Futility of Perfectionism

Early in my career, I wasted countless hours arguing about code style. I would read blog posts pontificating about the supposed superiority of one formatting choice over another, and I would eagerly evangelize these opinions to my colleagues. I once nearly came to blows with a coworker over whether to use single or double quotes for string literals in JavaScript. (For the record, I was team single quotes.)

I cringe looking back on these arguments now. Not because my opinions were "wrong", but because I now realize how little those opinions actually mattered. The time I spent bickering about code style was time I could have spent learning more impactful skills or building something useful.

This is a common trap for developers, especially those early in their careers. When faced with the daunting complexity and ambiguity of real-world software development, it‘s tempting to fixate on something that feels more tractable, like code formatting. It provides a false sense of control and mastery.

But here‘s the thing: in my 20+ years of writing code professionally, I have never once seen a measurable impact on bug count, performance, or development speed that I could attribute to a code style choice. Sure, consistent formatting makes code more pleasant to read and maintain. But the specific details of that formatting? They just don‘t move the needle in any meaningful way.

Don‘t just take my word for it. Let‘s look at some data. In the 2018 State of JavaScript survey, over 20,000 developers were asked about their code style preferences. The results? A nearly even split between tabs and spaces, with a slight preference for single quotes over double.

Similar surveys in other language communities show similar results. For any given code style debate, you‘ll find smart, opinionated developers on both sides, with no clear consensus.

If these choices really mattered as much as we like to think, wouldn‘t we see more convergence? Wouldn‘t there be hard data showing the superiority of one approach over others? The fact that these debates persist, year after year, suggests that they are more about personal preference than measurable impact.

The Bikeshed Effect

So why do developers spend so much time arguing about code style? It‘s a psychological phenomenon known as the "bikeshed effect" or "Parkinson‘s law of triviality".

The term was coined by Poul-Henning Kamp, in reference to a satirical story from C. Northcote Parkinson. In the story, a committee spends a disproportionate amount of time discussing the materials for a staff bike shed, while glossing over far more complex and important matters like a nuclear reactor design.

The idea is that people will give disproportionate weight to trivial issues, because they are easier to understand and have an opinion on. Everyone can visualize a bike shed and argue about what color to paint it. But far fewer people can meaningfully engage with the intricacies of nuclear engineering.

We see this same effect play out constantly in the software world. Teams will spend hours bikeshedding code style details, but barely discuss higher-level architectural concerns. Junior developers will eagerly weigh in on tabs vs. spaces, but hesitate to raise questions about system design or performance.

It‘s not that code style is entirely unimportant. But it‘s the least important thing that still feels like "real work". It‘s a way to feel productive while avoiding the more ambiguous and uncomfortable challenges inherent to our field.

Consider this real-world example: I once worked on a team responsible for maintaining a sprawling, legacy PHP codebase. The system had major architectural issues, performance problems, and a raft of scary, hard-to-fix bugs. But what did the team spend most of their time discussing in code reviews? Indentation, variable naming, and other trivial style issues.

It was easier to nitpick someone‘s formatting than to engage with the deeper problems of the system. As a result, the codebase remained a mess, even as every file rigorously adhered to the team‘s chosen style guide.

The Cost of Consistency

Now, you might argue that having a consistent code style, even if the details are arbitrary, is still worthwhile. After all, code is read far more than it is written, so shouldn‘t we optimize for readability?

There‘s certainly truth to this. A codebase where every file follows a different formatting convention can be jarring and difficult to navigate. It‘s valuable to have some standards, automatically enforced, so that developers can focus on the content of the code rather than its presentation.

But taken too far, the pursuit of consistency can actually be counterproductive. Consider the following:

• Enforcing code style too rigidly can lead to pointless busywork. I‘ve seen developers waste hours reformatting old code to adhere to a new style guide, with no functional change. This is demoralizing and saps time away from more impactful tasks.

• Overly-specific style rules can make code harder to read, not easier. Have you ever seen a complex one-liner crammed into a too-small line limit? Or a function with so many required comments that the actual code is lost in the noise? Readability should be the goal, not adherence to arbitrary rules.

• Strict style rules can discourage experimentation and learning. If a developer feels that they must rigidly adhere to an extensive ruleset just to submit a pull request, they may be less likely to try out new ideas or techniques. This can lead to stagnation.

• Focusing too much on consistent style can give a false sense of quality. Just because a codebase has perfectly consistent indentation doesn‘t mean it‘s well-designed, performant, or bug-free. In fact, an excessive focus on style can detract from these more substantive quality concerns.

Again, this isn‘t to say that code style is entirely unimportant. But it‘s a means to an end (readable, maintainable code), not an end in itself. And there are vastly more impactful things we could be focusing on as developers.

Choosing Your Battles

So what‘s the solution? How do we stop wasting time on trivial style debates and focus on what really matters?

Here‘s my advice, based on many years in the trenches:

1. Pick a style guide and stick to it. Don‘t waste time inventing your own standards from scratch. Find a well-established, popular style guide for your language and adopt it wholesale. Here are some good options:
   • Google Style Guides (various languages)
   • Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide
   • PEP 8 (Python)
   • PSR-12 (PHP)
2. Use tools to automate enforcement. Once you‘ve chosen a style guide, use linters, formatters, and Git hooks to automatically enforce it as much as possible. This frees developers from having to think about style and allows them to focus on content. Some popular tools:
   • ESLint (JavaScript)
   • Rubocop (Ruby)
   • Black (Python)
   • php-cs-fixer (PHP)
3. Establish a clear code review process. Code reviews are an excellent way to maintain code quality and consistency. But they can also devolve into nitpicky style debates. Establish clear guidelines for what should and shouldn‘t be commented on in a review. Emphasize substantive issues like bugs, performance, and maintainability over minor style quibbles.
4. Focus on automation testing, not formatting. If you want to improve the reliability and quality of your codebase, invest in a robust suite of unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. Automated tests will catch bugs and regressions far more effectively than any amount of manual style nitpicking. Industry data consistently shows a correlation between test coverage and code quality.

Source: Coverity Scan Open Source Report 2014

5. When in doubt, err on the side of flexibility. If there‘s a style issue that‘s not covered by your chosen guide, or if there‘s disagreement on the team about a particular rule, lean towards allowing variation rather than enforcing a single choice. Remember, the goal is readable, maintainable code, not strict uniformity.
6. Lead by example. If you‘re in a leadership role, set the tone by focusing on substantive code quality issues over trivial style debates. Praise developers for elegant solutions, thoughtful comments, robust tests, and good performance, not just for following the style guide to the letter. Demonstrate that the team‘s time and energy is better spent on these higher-level concerns.

The Bigger Picture

At the end of the day, remembering the bigger picture is crucial. We aren‘t (or shouldn‘t be) writing code for the sake of writing code. We‘re writing code to solve problems, to create value for end users and customers.

When I‘m debating a code style issue, I like to ask myself: "Will this choice make any difference to the end user? Will it make the system more reliable, more performant, more useful to them?" If the answer is no, it‘s probably not worth arguing about.

That‘s not to say that developer experience doesn‘t matter. Happy, productive developers certainly create better outcomes for end users! But there are far more impactful things we could be doing to improve developer experience than quibbling over code style. We could be:

• Writing clear, comprehensive documentation
• Improving our testing and deployment processes
• Investing in better development tools and environments
• Providing mentorship and learning opportunities for junior team members
• Fostering a culture of psychological safety and open communication

These are the things that truly make a difference in the day-to-day life of a developer, and in the quality of the software we produce.

Breaking the Cycle

So the next time you find yourself embroiled in a heated debate about tabs vs. spaces, or any other code style holy war, take a step back and ask yourself:

• Is this really the most important thing I could be focusing on right now?
• Will this choice make a meaningful difference to code quality, performance, or end-user value?
• Could our time be better spent on higher-level design, architecture, or process concerns?

More often than not, the answers to these questions will lead you to disengage from the bikeshedding and refocus on what truly matters. And if we all start doing this, maybe – just maybe – we can finally put these unproductive style debates to rest and get on with the real work of building great software.

Because at the end of the day, our users don‘t care about the color of the bike shed. They just want a system that works well and meets their needs. Let‘s focus our energy there.