ConfPad

Today every major language has some kind of library that helps a developer formatting his or her code. Tools like Prettier, Gofmt and Refmt are setting new standards and have a deep impact on our day to day programming. But what does it actually mean to format code? Does it mean pressing a magical button to align your code? Is it more than the automatic insertion of trailing commas your colleague always seems to forget? Why are we even doing it? How is it going to impact us as programmers to get better? “Code formatting” is an opaque ocean, we’ve done a really poor job at explaining what code formatting actually means in today’s world. The recent hype around code formatting tools defaults us into thinking that we can’t live without them anymore. We need to stop and ask why we’re using these tools. Is it really the best course of action? Based on my experience contributing to Reason over the past 1.5 years, this lightning talk will be a short, critical deep dive in the past, present & future of our beloved Reason formatter Refmt.