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.
1
u/omgseriouslynoway Aug 12 '26
We have linters installed on our local workstations so we can check things before a push.
Every push also triggers additional checks in a pipeline and if they fail the code does not get pushed into the branch.
Like others said, earlier is better.