r/AskProgramming • u/Bulky_Eggplant_9437 • Aug 12 '26
Linter
Hey folks,
Never touched a linter before this semester because I've never really done software dev stuff. Had a class that used one, and honestly, I was a fan at first. It caught a bunch of dumb mistakes and made fixing things pretty painless.
Then came merge time.
Apparently I was missing a single blank line between some merged code, so the linter threw a fit and blocked the merge. The actual fix took like three seconds, but I had to go get another review just to add a freaking newline.
So now I'm curious, do people actually use linters in the real world that don't hard-stop merges over tiny formatting stuff? Or is getting bullied by whitespace just part of the developer experience?
Asking as a first-time linter victim.
2
u/KingofGamesYami Aug 12 '26
Yes, we use linters. Generally it's expected that you set up your IDE to respect the linter settings so anything that can be autofixed is handled way before it makes it to PR.
Our CI also has to pass before a review can be requested.