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, LOTS_OF_MONEY 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: 103376,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 146b77,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid146b77,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com Subject: Re: Ada vs C++ vs Java Date: 1999/01/20 Message-ID: <784lo6$59l$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 434783027 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$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <77vhjf$nn9$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <77vld9$qvg$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <782rp0$kn6$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6Oap2.16170$MW1.4028@news2.giganews.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x14.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed Jan 20 13:29:50 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.vxworks,comp.lang.java,comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-01-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <6Oap2.16170$MW1.4028@news2.giganews.com>, cbbrowne@hex.net wrote: <> > If the organization or the people are so inflexible that > something like this isn't possible, then something's > wrong. Here we go again, I guess cbbrowne did not read to the end of the thread (to see that this particular suggestion has been made several times and answered). In my experience, with no exceptions so far, everyone who has made this suggestion is talking about something they think might work, rather than describing actual practices in a live shop. For all sorts of reasons, some of which have been recently discussed, this approach is very hard to get working in practice. There is no conceptual problem, but the tools and environments are just not conveniently setup to take this approach. I am dubious about whether it would work anyway, because I think the team psychological advantages of learning to work together in a completely consistent manner can still be lost. For example, suppose you have two people working together at a workstation on a problem looking at sources. If one is used to looking at them one way, and one another way, then you won't be able to work together as smoothly as if you have made the (really rather trivial) effort to all get used to a completely common style. But I would be happy to hear from people who have actually worked in an environment where this approach is used in a systematic and controlled manner, if there are any. As I say I have never encountered any. So far, all suggestions of this type come from shops where in fact practices with respect to consistency of style at this level are chaotic, and code ownership, partly stamped by style is endemic. Remember the goals here 1. To eliminate the notion of code ownership, and encourage egoless programming where people work as a team, and regard the product they are working on as a team product rather than a collectoin of individual projects. 2. To facilitiate cooperative work based on a common environment and common set of stylistic approaches. Now some people may actually object to the goals of 1. Fine, you are on another planet from me when it comes to software production, but I perfectly understand that workable software can be produced in a highly individualistic environment (I used to work that way myself :-) But given the goals above, I believe they can only be achieved by actually reaching a consensus on style issues, and having everyone FULLY adopt them, both at a technical and psychological level. As I say, it would be interesting to here from a group that systematically used some kind of canonicalization of sources, with individuals performing style translations to their own tastes whenever they make changes. Note the importance of the word systematically here. I am not talking about isolated cases where Joe is forced to work on Harry's code, which he finds disgusting because the brackets are in the wrong place, and first changes all the bracket positions with a tool, then works on it, leaving Harry annoyed when he gets back to find that his code has been destroyed :-) -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own