The Linter Isn’t Your Boss: Coding Without the Buzzkill

Linting was invented to catch dumb mistakes. Somewhere along the way, it became a religion.

Today, entire teams bow to Prettier, ESLint, Stylelint, and some plugin that enforces their CTO’s weird obsession with object spacing. It’s no longer about catching bugs — it’s about passing the vibe check of a machine that doesn’t write code, doesn’t ship features, and doesn’t care about your deadline.

We’ve built a Rube Goldberg machine of rules to catch an undefined, but we still forget to validate a form.

Linters Are for Guards, Not Gods

Yes, linting helps. It can:

• Catch undefined variables
• Warn about bad imports
• Enforce consistency across large teams

That’s the pitch. And it’s not wrong.

But here’s the problem: we’ve stopped thinking.

Your useEffect has a missing dependency? Add it — break the app. Doesn’t matter. The linter’s green.

Linting has gone from helpful assistant to passive-aggressive project manager.

You Can Break the Rules — If You Know Them

Great developers don’t follow every rule. They know which ones matter and which ones are cargo cult.

They:

• Disable strict mode for a messy prototype
• Use any when types are noise
• Turn off formatters to preserve clarity
• Write long functions because linear thinking is faster sometimes

Linters are suggestions, not scripture.

Obeying them without context doesn’t make you a better developer. It makes you a quieter one.

The “Fix It Later” Paradox

You’ve heard it. You’ve said it:

“Let’s just get it working. We’ll clean it up later.”

Sounds agile. Feels freeing.

Until your repo won’t build because of one extra comma and a console.log.

Now you’re tweaking 47 files just to test one tiny change.

Congrats. The linter is your gatekeeper.

Code That Just Runs

Try this:

1. Disable all linting in a new project
2. Write the dirtiest, fastest, messiest code that works
3. Turn linting back on when you need to collaborate or scale

You’ll move faster. You’ll think more. You’ll remember what it’s like to write code like a human — not a compliance officer.

Because code should be written by humans first. Machines can sort it out later.

Bottom Line

If the linter’s yelling and your app still works?

Let it yell.

You’re here to solve problems — not win formatting gold stars.