Comment by greggman

I use the Google style guide as well since it's required by my job and while I have learned somethings from it I'm not a fan.

80 characters? I never had that limit for the 27 years of programming proceeding using the Google style guide and it never caused me any grief. I find that naming things descriptively and an 80 character limit are at odds.

I'd rather read

    maxCombinedUniformVectors = maxFragmentUniformVectors + maxVectorUniformVectors;

than

    maxCombinedUniformVectors = 
        maxFragmentUniformVectors + maxVectorUniformVectors;

or

    maxCombinedUniformVectors = maxFragmentUniformVectors + 
                                maxVectorUniformVectors;

I admit it's kind of useful for side by side diff tools but in my previous 27 years of programming I never felt like "If only this code was 80 characters I could read the diff".

More importantly though, the Google Style guide is written by Java programmers to try to make JavaScript into Java, totally ignoring all the benefits of treating JavaScript like JavaScript. That has it's benefits, especially for Java programmers. They don't have to learn some of the cooler things about JavaScript. They can go on treating it like a traditional oop language. And they get static type checking.

On the other hand, all of these FP concepts are out

http://osteele.com/sources/javascript/functional/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-javascript/inde... http://osteele.com/archives/2007/07/functional-javascript http://www.cubiclemuses.com/cm/blog/archives/000307.html/

Even common JS concepts like encapsulation

    var ErrorLogger = (function(){
      var privateErrorCount = 0;

      return {
        error: function(msg) {
          console.log(msg);
          ++privateErrorCount;
        },
        getNumErrors: function() {
          return privateErrorCount;
        }
      }
    }());
         

Are not allowed by the Google Style guide as well as many other JSisms.

Another nit, Google Style guides disallow formatting for readability except for comments?!?!

Allowed

    var kStateRun = 1;        // character is running
    var kStateRunToWalk = 2;  // character is transitioning from run to walk
    var kStateWalk = 3;       // character is walking

Not allowed

    var kStateRun       = 1;  // character is running
    var kStateRunToWalk = 2;  // character is transitioning from run to walk
    var kStateWalk      = 3;  // character is walking

Either lining things up makes them easier to read or it doesn't. Comments are not some exception. If lining up comments makes them easier to read then lining up anything makes it easier to read.