Re: Language Choice and Coding style

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

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

>Peter Herman says

>  "I like it to allow everyone to show his personal style.
>  This is even important because the motivation is very much higher.
>  They are and should keep to be individuals.
>  And I like it when I see at first glance "Oh that is the typical
>  style of Barbara". This holds for code production inside bodies."

>Fascinating to see this point of view expressed so directly (it is I am
>sure shared in practice by many programmers).

>To me this "ego-centered" style of programming is deadly. It promotes a
>situation where in a big project code is owned by individuals. Clearly
>if you see that some code is "typical Barbara" style, then the next step
>is that only Barbara touches that code, and a consequence is that only
>Barbara really looks at that code.

>This is not team work, this is a collection of individuals working together,
>and you lose the advantages of working as a team. In particular:

>   a) If Barbara starts polishing her resume, you can be in big trouble
>   b) Only one pair of eyes looks at Barbara's code (other people don't
>        because they have their own style they prefer to read).

That's more of a management problem. It's whoever is in charge's
responsibility to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen, and
formatting editors canhelp to make sure that no one cangive the excuse
that someone else's code is difficult for them to read.



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