Re: Language Choice and Coding style

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

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

>Yes, indeed. And why in any case do we consider the use of formatting
>editors -- just to allow programmers to follow their own idiosyncratic
>tastes in formatting?

>But (a) this is of no value, there is no point in indulging idiosyncrasy
>unless there is some definite technical advantage in doing so, and none
>can be claimed for simple formatting issues.

>More importantly, (b) if programmers can't even agree to use a common
>standard for trivial formatting issues, you have on your hands the kind
>of personality that just does not like conformity and consistency. We
>have certainly seen that personality displayed by a few people here. If
>you have someone like that, then, much more seriously than not indenting
>right, they are likely to fight against conformity to much more important
>requirements for consistent standards at the design level.

This is entirely the point (well my point anyway) - formatting in the
terms of overall design is trivial and can be easily modified by
machine, however as has been pointed out, it is common for two people
to find each other's method of formatting very difficult to read.
Who's method is correct? Neither! So why should there be a problem
allowing the use of formatting editors which will present the code to
you in a format that you find highly readable, and easier to
understand and modify?

As far as conformity is concerned, where would we be now if everyone
in the 15th and 16th century had conformed to the opinion that the
world was flat! You would certainly not be where you are now!
Conformity restricts imagination and individuality.

>People who insist on coding in their own style should stick to one person
>projects in my opinion. Consistency and conformity at *all* levels of
>a program, ranging from the simplest formatting issues to fundamental
>design structure, is an absolute requirement in multi-person projects.

Just as an example, the current project I am working on has a set of
"coding rules" defined by our German customer. Early on in the project
I sat with my team and we discussed these rules. In many cases we
could see no technical justification for the rules, and indeed some of
them were just stupid and to those rules we stated that we would
attempt to stick to them, but would not guarantee it. We did however
agree on what way we would do things instead of what had been defined
by the customer and it worked successfully.

The formatting rules, however, we practically ignored as we knew that
with very little effort (using emacs ada-mode) we could comply with
those rules practically without even thinking about them.


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