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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,577df5d4a0e88785 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2000-12-18 14:28:07 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!newsfeed.online.be!fu-berlin.de!cs.tu-berlin.de!uni-duisburg.de!l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de!sb463ba From: sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de (Georg Bauhaus) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Bad coding standards Date: 18 Dec 2000 22:20:18 GMT Organization: GMUGHDU Message-ID: <91m2j2$bkn$1@news-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> References: <91b9ma$bne$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3A3E36C4.3466A19C@averstar.com> <3A3E5E7E.67817482@acm.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:3233 Date: 2000-12-18T22:20:18+00:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic (mcondic.nospam@acm.org) wrote: : Consistency : means that someone reading your code within a project will more immediately : recognize what they are looking at. Having to live in a world with several styles in a set of files belonging together, or even in the same files, I've come to think of these not-easy-to-maintain but still usable files as plays, not monographs. The perspective of watching many actors is a helpful relief when one has to adapt ones code recognition apparatus to others' ways of writing their code. I understand that Robert Dewar prefers strict stylistic unification, for reasons that he has restated in this thread, namely being advantageous for maintanablility, and fostering egoless programming. What is missing in this argument however, is, I think, on what particular view this is based. Is it true that egoless programming is a good thing, _economically_? The argument is incomplete if it does not show why it is preferable, if programmers don't see who wrote what, and if programmers are (possibly) forced to write to that effect. I'm reminded of the "Motivation" article in the Emacs distribution. If you care about your Ego and connect a reason to be proud or satisfied or motivated with your name appearing and your style showing up, with the idea in mind, that people will be noting this, then Egos programming could be an economically relevant factor. Are there measurements? Are there arguments that are stronger? (Well, I think so ;-) : Slowly, I was persuaded to use mixed case. I think I've grown to like : the appearance of mixed case because it just looks nicer. But its a matter of : taste (...) : like the rest of the code in the project (unless it is hopelessly messy!) and : you're doing a favor to those that come after you. Now there are some things that need to be noted when it comes to chosing upper and lower case characters, as is known to typesetters. Everything depends largely on the font! As an analog, count the books not using letters with serifs for the main text, this is not just a matter of taste, but of readability, there are very few fonts granting readabilyty without serifs. Same for all upper case: The font (plus kerning) chosen has a strong influence on whether or not most readers will have difficulties reading a longer passage. (There is a note concerning this in N. Cohens book.) Try formatting some mixed case Ada program in ALGOL 60 style ("Description" book, reserved words bold sans serifs, identifiers in italics, all lower case, operators, parens upright symbols) (i.e. one deviation: mixed case) and see if you still think you are reading the same source code. Try some letter combinations in upper and lower case with a left parenthesis somewhere in between. Have you ever seen a typeset math book leaving a space between f(x)'s f and (? This is not an argument for forcing no space between subprogram identifiers and parameter lists in monospaced source code, say. Rather, it shows that an italic f, a roman (, and an italic x make the paren stand out in these fonts. This is not always guaranteed in monospaced fonts. So, aesthetics (there is no one character th in either American or British (or Irish?) English, after all ;-) is not just prettyness or beauty or looking nice, in the sense that these have effects. Before trying variations, and measuring the effects (or trying to do so), the perspective may be considered incomplete. Georg Bauhaus