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Comment on What real life bad habits has programming given you?

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I learned to program when I was really young and I can't help but think that it gave me my OCD. A bit of CBT and some "mindhacks" of my own have almost got rid of it now though.

Another one I had as a kid was writing the number zero with a line through it. That's how it was on the BBC Micro and my schoolteachers couldn't understand why I wrote it that way too.

I guess another one is being a major advocate of US English (I'm English) but I'm not sure if that's due to programming or because, well, it is a better dialect.

For God's sake, don't use our punctuation rules.

  # Carefree means "free from care or anxiety." (American style)
  # Carefree means "free from care or anxiety". (British style)
That has bugged me so much that, unless it is being proofread, I intentionally use British-style quotes.

One of the nice things about the English language is the difference between U.S. and UK rules, so you can mix and match them to your own taste and people can't tell you you're doing it wrong.

So for example I write "center" not "centre" but "axe" not "ax".

I do this too.

Cheers!

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