Suggestion: prefer eslint syntax over style

With more and more tools becoming available to automatically format the code base to a certain set of style rules (and more comprehensive than eslint --fix, I’m also more inclined to stop teaching style preference, as indicated by mentor notes, mentor guidance docs and discussions on slack.

The current state

Currently, the javavscript package.json sets a very restrictive code style (airbnb) and I don’t think this:

• helps the student understand the language
• helps the student get fluent in a language
• helps the mentor mentoring as downloading exercises can result in wibbly wobblies all over the place

We don’t instruct or enforce these rules (https://github.com/exercism/javascript/issues/44#issuecomment-416760562) strictly, but I seem them in mentoring comments and most IDE’s will run these automagically if present.

Recommendation

I therefore recommend to drop down to eslint:recommend or if we must have a non-company style guide, use standard with semicolon rules disabled (people should decide about ASI themselves – I don’t think pushing people who know about ASI helps anyone, and TS doesn’t have them either).

If this is something we want, I think doing it sooner rather than later is good and will speed up #480 greatly. The eslintignore list is still quite long and I don’t think tháts particularly helpful.

As a final note, I think we should better communicate to the students to run npm/yarn install and then npm/yarn test. I also suggest running test followed by lint so that someone is only bugged once the test succeeds, instead of using a "pretest": "lint":

{ 
  "scripts": {
    "test": "test:jest && test:lint",
    "test:jest": "...",
    "test:lint": "..."
   }
}

[SleeplessByte]

I’m happy to actually strip all style items left in eslint:recommended btw! We are definitely in sync on reasoning and I agree with everything you say.

[tejasbubane]

I am in the favor of not recommending anything to students - only use it for CI in our repo. For mentors, put a mentor note regarding the same. What do you think?

This is because JS does not have a standard formatting tool (you mentioned the same in previous comment). Had it been golang or elixir, it would be good to recommend.

Having said that I am OK with using eslint:recommend as well - since it is less strict and opinionated that airbnb. But I would certainly put up a mentor note to atleast not make it a requirement for students (it is fine to subtly suggest, but not ok to make it a requirement for approving solutions).