A Love Hate Relation

11 Feb 2021

---

A couple of years ago, I worked at a retail store as a sales associate. The job was not enjoyable; I was going out of my mind between having to stand all day and dealing with the problematic customers. However, the worst part of the job was this one manager that I had. He would often go around nitpicking everything that I do; no matter what I do, he always manages to think of something to say about it. It was frustrating to have someone watching over my shoulder and reminding me of things that I already know and would get to if he would just be quiet and wait.

The annoying feeling that I had towards the manager is the same feeling I have towards ESLint. When I write code, I wish it would back off a little and let me catch my breath between lines. Every time I write a code, it is always there telling me things like “Hey, there should not be this space here” or “I expected four spaces of indentation, but there is six.” With its red squiggly line underneath the code like an incorrectly spelled word in an essay. It drives me crazy whenever I see the red line because I feel like I have done something wrong and must fix it immediately. Whenever I am pressed for time while writing code, I cannot think properly because of this problem. My mind keeps darting between thinking of ways to get the code to work and the problematic squiggly red lines.

In general, I am ambivalent about the use of ESLint. Even though it is indeed a nuisance about certain things, ESLint helps make my code readable and more organized for others to read. I appreciate that it catches mistakes that would render my code useless. If I had to choose between having it and not having it, I would choose to keep it because I am a perfectionist who wishes to have my codes perfectly formatted.