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Google Bash Style Guidelines are Shit

Once upon a time I valued Google’s Bash Style Guidelines. Now I think they are absolute shit. They obfuscate the code with inline documentations that cannot be used anyplace else at all. The template-bash-command that I created, with embedded CommonMark Markdown documentation stored in a bash 4+ associative array that can be rendered as a README.md file is objectively superior on every level, particularly because it can be combined with GitHub to provide search-ability across all bash commands used.

Plus my template-bash-command supports automatic tab completion and a host of other stuff the Google “guidelines” can’t even dream of implementing.

Also, can we all just agree that "${foo}" (unless you need it) unnecessarily obfuscates code and makes it harder to read and write. This is bash we are talking about. It’s suppose to be fast to write above all. Scripting in bash is about developer speed, not long-term maintainability. Sure a lot of bash will be around, but this stupid constraint for ${} is just fucked.

Calling out the usage and return values of every function is still a sound idea, I suppose. But, honestly, if you are writing code well it will be immediately and totally obvious. If it’s not, you’re writing the code wrong. Besides, a rhetorical explanation of what the function does is always better than trying to overengineer every possible option and return value into a pseudo-textual-database at the beginning of every function. You can really tell these “guidelines” where created by engineers (and not technical documentation writers).

🤬 Hey Google, might want to have a professional technical writer chime in on your shitty style guidelines before forcing them on your entire company. Google gets so much shit absolutely wrong it’s embarrassing. I’m still amazed when I hear people talk about “following the Google unicorn”.

A better alternative to Google style guidelines is just plain and simple: pass shellcheck. I really seriously regret having told anyone to follow those guidelines (especially since one of them went on to create a ton of code that I now have to sift through and work with every day).