Debate: Should beginners use auto formatters or learn formatting by hand?

I spent 2 hours debugging Python yesterday because my auto formatter screwed up my indentation. Some say tools like Black save time for newbies, but others argue you need to learn the basics first. Which side are you on for someone who just started coding 3 months ago?

2 comments

2 Comments

dylanh9714d ago

My buddy Jake started coding 2 months ago and refused to use auto formatters at first. He spent a whole weekend fixing curly braces in his JavaScript, then caved and installed Prettier the next Monday. Said he finally got why formatting matters after fighting it himself for a bit.

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riverm4813d ago

Yeah I was totally that guy too. Refused to use any auto formatting for like the first year, thought I knew better. Eventually realized I was just wasting time and it wasn't worth the ego trip, so yeah, this post kinda hit home for me.