[wp-hackers] Discussion about Optional Closing PHP tags in the WordPress Library

[Jacob Santos]

It was long, but not entirely pointless. I'll shorten it for you.

1. Coding Standards exist for consistency, even if they are consistency 
wrong.

2. Debating Coding Standards is like debating Politics, what it comes 
down to is a matter of preference.

Matt Mullenweg is the person you should be talking to. Email the guy and 
try to convince him. You might be a better at getting your points 
across, than I was. I'm willing to bet that he won't change the coding 
standard based off of the amount of end users facing this problem. He 
has changed his mind before, so it is possible.

I would explain further, but it might become "pointless", so I'm just 
going to say that if you reply, don't a reply from me explaining the two 
points. You should do research or you should debate the subject with 
Matt. The answer might come to you then.

I will leave with an example. My personal set of coding standards for 
brackets, is that every curly bracket is on its own line. The reason I 
do this is because I've been burned before trying to find the missing 
opening or closing bracket and it is easier for me to just scroll up and 
down and match the two. For WordPress, the opening curly bracket rests 
is not on its own line. I do not apply my person coding standards when I 
write patches for WordPress, I use the WordPress set of Coding 
Standards. Do I always agree, no, but I realize the purpose of Coding 
Standards and do it their way.

Jacob Santos


Otto wrote:
> I'm not going to address most of that severely long and somewhat
> pointless post. Sorry Jacob, but you're being way too wordy on this
> subject.
>
> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 7:34 PM, Jacob Santos <wordpress at santosj.name> wrote:
>   
>> However, the main debate is
>> that WordPress should follow the standards, opening tag must have closing
>> tag.
>>     
>
> No, I'm sorry, but you keep talking about standards as if that
> actually changes anything, when it does not.
>
> If the standards say do to things other than the actual correct way to
> do things, then the standards are wrong.
>
> Rules exist only to make you think about it before you break them. If
> the rule says to do X but Y makes more sense and prevents more
> problems, then you should do Y.
>
> -Otto
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