Re: Ada95 Pretty-Printers/Coding styles

["Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <nospam@gsg.eds.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> I think that commonality of style is necessary to get a really cooperative
> environment that effectively eliminates the notion of code ownership (I
> certainly have never seen this achieved in an environment without a
> strong sense of common style).

I've been in cooperative environments, and never has it been necessary
to tell
the programmers to adopt a common style and code in lock step. If that's
the only
way that you can get cooperation then there's something wrong with your
managers or your programmers, probably both. Further, I know of no
evidence that eliminating the sense of code ownership is desirable, or
even benign.

That said, there are several areas where. IMHO, uniformity is desirable.
A common set of tools allows the programmers to easily interchange data
and enhancements to the tool set. A programmer modifying an existing
procedure should adhere to the existing conventions for, e.g.,
indentation, in order to keep it cohesive.

As to a sense of ownership, I believe that it leads to pride in
workmanship provided that it is not used as an excuse for maintaining an
exclusive lock on the code or an
immature and unprofessional resentment of anyone who finds a problem in
it. But the latter problem, in my experience, is more likely when the
entire group regards the code as collectively theirs than when
"ownership" is vested in just one programmer.

I but software from small developers and from large corporations. The
small developers generally have a sense of ownership, and they are
generally very responsive to problem reports. The large corporations,
for the most part, have institutional ownership of the code and
stonewall when problems are reported.

Of course, there are exceptions: lousy personal support and good
institutional support. But those are in the "man bites dog" category.

-- 

                        Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
                        Senior Software SE

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