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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8811b64ee948c3e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ohk@edeber.tfdt-o.nta.no (Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen FOU.TD/DELAB) Subject: Re: Code Formatters Date: 1996/11/05 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 194543166 references: <552nkb$u1k@gcsin3.geccs.gecm.com> <327A17CA.6B30@gsfc.nasa.gov> organization: Telenor Online Public Access newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: Mike Stark says "I completely disagree -- we shouldn't be paying software developers to worry about whether the indentation is two or three spaces, or whether the "record" keyword should be on the same line or the next line as the "type" keyword. We're paying people to think, not to format." This is like saying that we shouldn't be paying novelists to write correct grammar or elegant style, they should just be thinking aout plots, and copy editors will fix things up. Yes, I agree, but only to a certain extent. When you write a report, do you use hours fiddling with fonts, margins, etc. on a wysiwyg editor, or do you describe the structure of the document and let something like Tex/Latex take care of the details? Certainly, those tasks which can be done more efficiently by the computer should be done that way. In fact the only kind of software engineers that I would be willing to pay are those who DO worry about the style of their code, and take some pride in laying it out and documenting it in an elegant manner. Your idea of elegant code may not coincide with mine. As a project leader, I want *standardized* layout. Having a standard layout which is conformant to the output to some prettyprinter is in my opinion a good idea, because it means that those who do not want to be burdened with the detailed layout can avoid it. This does not stop anyone from documenting the program in an elegant manner, assuming that you can stop the prettyprinter from mangling your comments. In my experience, this is not much of a problem, unless you insist on very arcane commenting styles. Thinking that automatic formatting programs can convert junk code to elegant code, particularly with respect to laying out comments nicely, is like those who in the 60's thought that they could replace docuemtnation by automatic flow chart generators. We are not talking about converting junk code, but about avoiding unnecessary work which could be done by a program.