Re: [PATCH 0/2] Trivial cleanups

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, "Martin Ågren" <martin.agren@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] Trivial cleanups
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2021 03:22:05 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <60c8632d60027_e633208db@natae.notmuch> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqbl87zyra.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > These perfeclty good patches from 2014 weren't picked with no good
> > reason.
> 
> These are safe no-op changes, but that does not mean they are good
> patches.

They are not good patches because they are no-op, they are good changes
because they correct the flow of the code to match the flow in which
most people think.

  18 is younger than Mary

is not a sentence most people would agree make sense.

> It goes against Documentation/CodingGuidelines to bring it
> back again now, which is a good enough reason not to look at them.

These are not style issues. Refactoring code to make it easier to
understand goes beyond style.

Refactoring this:

	static int is_same_remote(struct remote *remote)
	{
		struct remote *fetch_remote = remote_get(NULL);
		return (!fetch_remote || fetch_remote == remote);
	}

	int same_remote = is_same_remote(remote);

To this:

	int same_remote = remote == remote_get(NULL);

Is more than just style.

But suit yourself. Sooner or later somebody is going to fix these
glaring mistakes. And they are mistakes [1].

  Yoda conditions are widely criticized for compromising readability by
  increasing the cognitive load of reading the code.

Cheers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoda_conditions#Criticism

-- 
Felipe Contreras