RE: Bad coding standards

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article
<B6A1A9B09E52D31183ED00A0C9E0888C469951@nctswashxchg.
nctswash.navy.mil>,
  comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote:
> I'm not saying coding standards/style guides are
> just aesthetics.  Listen to me now.  I'm saying
> that "outside" of coding standards that specify
> "which constructs to use" for given situations, you
> are now in the realm of aesthetics.

This seems a mistaken attitude to me. Yes you can
argue like Humpty-Dumpty that words mean anything
you want them to mean, but using the word "esthetics"
too easily implies to too many people that it is just
a matter of prettiness and not important.

In considering the entirety of software performance,
aspects which contribute to maintainability are much
more than just a matter of being pretty. For me, an
error in a comment, or a violation of a coding
standard for layout is a bug in the code, and should
be regarded as such.

Warning: non-Ada diversion

P.S. is aesthetics an allowable spelling in American
english? I don't have an American dictionary at hand.
The OED only permits the use of "e" or the ae letter
which I can't even write in this ASCII character set,
but does not permit a separate a and e character.

Of course one could take the position that the use
of ae in this crippled character set is merely a
short hand for the ae character. It is interesting
that daemon spelled with the ae character is a quite
a bit different from demon with an e. There are
positive and negative meanings of the word demon, and
the OED specifically notes that people often use the
a/e form to emphasize the positive meaning of an
agent that intervenes in a positive way (that's the
meaning that Unix tries to catch, rather than the
negative meaning).


Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/