Re: Language Choice and Coding style

[Dan Evens <evensd@nts.ohn.hydro.on.ca>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Samuel says
> 
> "Anyway, for this particular small area -- code formatting -- the best
> approach is to use a formatting editor, so everybody can set up his
> *own* preferences and see the code the way *he* finds most readable.
> (Or she.)"
> 
> I strongly disagree. In theory this sounds OK, but style covers much more
> than simple rules that can be messed around with by a formatting editor.
> If a team is not willing to agree on unimportant little things, but insists
> on going their own individual way, I think you have little hope of
> achieving a high degree of coding style consistency, something I think
> is vital for the success of software projects with more than one person
> involved.

I strongly agree with Robert here.  Coding style is a very long book,
and formatting is one chapter. And not a particularly long chapter.
Things like naming conventions, loop initializations, number of lines
in code blocks, number of args to routines, etc., are all important
to coding style also. For projects with hundreds of subroutines and
many tens of thousands of lines of code, some of these things can make
just HUGE differences to things like the app being maintainable.

-- 
The preceding are my opinions alone and have nothing
whatever to do with my employer.  I don't even know what my
employer thinks. I'm not even real sure who the CEO is.
Dan Evens