Re: Language Choice and Coding style

[john@assen.demon.co.uk (John McCabe)]

dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:

<..snip..>

>I strongly disagree. In theory this sounds OK, but style covers much more
>than simple rules that can be messed around with by a formatting editor.
>If a team is not willing to agree on unimportant little things, but insists
>on going their own individual way, I think you have little hope of 
>achieving a high degree of coding style consistency, something I think
>is vital for the success of software projects with more than one person
>involved.

This all really depends on how you define "coding style" and where you
consider code formatting to be a particularly important part of that. 

Personally I consider "coding style" to mean how things are done
rather than the way they look. If I can give an example of one style
compared to another (from C as it is a very obvious and common one):

	a = ((x < 0) ? y : z);

and

	if (x < 0)
	{
		a = y;
	}
	else
	{
		a = z;
	}

are two ways of doing the same thing, but using what I consider to be
different coding styles.

The point is, there can be many different and equally valid ways of
producing e.g. an algorithm code. No one can say they know the best
way of doing it, so why should they enforce a style that they are
comfortable with? Not only could that lead to inefficient code, but
allowing coders more freedom to do things the way they want to is also
likely to be a learning experience for the others in the team.

Code formatting on the other hand is a very mechanical thing and can
be easily modified by machines into a format that a coder feels most
comfortable with. I find that as long as code looks the same (in terms
of formatting), then someone else's style of coding becomes much
easier for me to understand.

I would therefore consider a comfortable format of code to be far more
important for maintenance purposes than enforcing a particular style,
and if machines (by way of formatting editors) can help in this then
it should be actively encouraged.

Best Regards
John McCabe <john@assen.demon.co.uk>