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: 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: dennison@telepath.com Subject: Re: Ada vs C++ vs Java Date: 1999/01/21 Message-ID: <787u4j$225$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 435296905 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> <783nnb$s9c@drn.newsguy.com> <784qvi$a0a$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <78549k$iqv$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <785enu$sq5$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <787bv0$gr8$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x13.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 204.48.27.130 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Thu Jan 21 19:11:27 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.vxworks,comp.lang.java,comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.5 [en] (WinNT; I) Date: 1999-01-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <787bv0$gr8$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, dewar@gnat.com wrote: > Yes, but no one has argued that. You have been arguing > against style guide lines all together and then using > as your argument examples of silly rules. Please look at > your previous posts in the thread, you have made some > quite sweeping statements about *all* guidelines. No. I never argued *against* them. I have argued that guides should not include minutia like parentheses placement, or that developers should not be *forced* to follow them to that level; encouraged perhaps but not forced. Unless I'm mistaken, that's what "guideline" means. Unless you count the above, I don't think you are correct about me making "sweeping statements about style guidelines". But my memory's bad enough that I'll admit the possibility (I'm not sure *why* I would take such an easily-disproved approach to arguing a point, but it wouldn't be the first stupid thing I ever did). So I have done as you suggested and gone through dejanews looking for somewhere where I made a "sweeping statement about all style guidelines". Perhaps my query skills are not so hot, but I can't find any such statement. If someone could point me to the posts of mine Robert got this impression from, I'd appreciate it. I did find a whole lot of posts about specific situations where requiring strict adherence causes problems. Two of these counter-examples got dismissed as "silly", even though they were both real situations I have found myself in (funny, I wasn't laughing at the time...) > > I was on two programs where the style guide was a project > > deliverable with a deadline *before* coding started. > > A very reasonable requirement, and one that should be > easy to meet, since any well run shop should have a well > tried and true set of familiar guidelines on the shelf. Not if they have never before used the language in question! > This is not an argument against having a well chosen set > of style guidelines. You can't use one example of > incompetence to argue against an entire principle. (sigh) I'm not arguing against the principle of using good style guidelines. I'm arguing against the principle of automaticly firing *any* engineer who has a problem following a portion of a style guidline that is buggy (please allow me to use "buggy" rather than the more subjective and deragatory "silly"). I think all this time we have been arguing about two different things. The sad thing about it is that you just about have me convinced on what *you* were arguing about. I'll have to try it sometime. > Actually it would be interesting to see from this > environment where it is hard to change things whether > or not the changes were really justified, or were just > people chafing under having to change what they are > used to. My experience is that most often it is the > latter and not the former. In the "silly" example I gave, the *entire* staff was new to Ada. No one had a style of their own before the project started. Everyone (with one possible exception) picked up and used the style guide's style for most things. The problem was that it had holes, which isn't horribly suprising for a first effort. T.E.D. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own