From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f5d71,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gidf5d71,public X-Google-Thread: 146b77,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid146b77,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: Al Christians Subject: Re: Ada vs C++ vs Java Date: 1999/01/16 Message-ID: <36A17AC4.B5148ABB@easystreet.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 433552426 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <369C1F31.AE5AF7EF@concentric.net> <369DDDC3.FDE09999@sea.ericsson.se> <369e309a.32671759@news.demon.co.uk> <369F1D39.64A65BC1@sea.ericsson.se> <369f81a9.31040093@news.demon.co.uk> <77ommt$9bo$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <77q57g$dpu$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36A12D50.9604A0B0@cs.nyu.edu> <77rjbk$7d0@drn.newsguy.com> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news7.ispnews.com 916551691 206.103.35.76 (Sun, 17 Jan 1999 00:41:31 EDT) Organization: Trillium Resources Corporation MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 00:41:31 EDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.vxworks,comp.lang.java,comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-01-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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