Re: Ada vs C++ vs Java

[Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>]

bill@north.nospam.com.net wrote:
> 
> 
> as for the issue at hand, nowadays there are plenty of automated tools
> to reformat the source code in any shape one prefers. so it is not a
> problem. When you need to work on the code, reformat it as you prefer, work
> on it and check it in. The other person can check the code later, reformat it
> as they want and work on it.  I've done this myself on C/C++ code working
> with other programmers each prefer different way of formating. and we never
> had any problem.
> 

Bill

I thought that was ok, too, but it worked out poorly for me 
recently. 

The problem was that the differences in styles were sufficiently 
great that the formatting tool wouldn't be able to convert code 
from the different styles into a common representations so that 
diff would find only non-format differences and so that the 
standard code being diff'd would be readable enough  for 
efficient maintenance.  For example, when there are differences 
in whether a single-statement block should have {}'s 
around it, whether lines of code should be internally spaced so 
that similar items on successive lines would form neat columns, 
whether to use tabs or spaces, whether or not tabs should be used 
after non-whitespace characters, and when maximum line-length 
preferences vary from 60 to infinity, the tool is unlikely 
to be able to keep everyone working happily and productively in
their own preferred style.

Of course, diff is typically built into the versioning tool, so 
the code should be standardized each time before check-in.  That
means that at least n-1 programmers will be reformatting code 
every time they check it out, which may be inefficient, 
particularly so if they are trying to use a style that cannot be
reproduced 100% by machine.


Al