Re: Ada95 Pretty-Printers

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Sam said

<<Well, I have strong feelings, but I go with the defined style of the
project (if any).  But then, you don't have to believe that, you
mistrust me :-).
 
I agree that the benefits of any given style are far smaller than the
benefits of having a uniform coding style.  I was just glad to see
that there might be somewhere a project I could work on and code
like I like to code.
>>



Actually my experience is that most people, unless they are really inflexible,
quickly pick up and assume another style. Furthermore, after a while they get
used to it and cannot imagine changing.

That's certainly my experience with me. I used to really like the all upper
case identifier style of the RM (and I know all the objective arguments to
support the claim that it is better than mixed case -- stands out in comments,
can be dealt with algorithmically etc).

However, I was outvoted on the GNAT project in favor of mixed case. At first
I really disliked it, and found it hard to read, now I could not THINK of
going back to ALL UPPER CASE STUFF, Ugh! :-)

And Sam, if you are happy to go with whatever style is used by your project,
then no need to mistrust you, but I have seen cases where some competent 
programmer insists on using their own style even when everyone else in the
company follows the standard style. Personally I would fire such a programmer,
but that is an extreme position, which many companies are not will to follow,
and instead they tolerate unnecessary variation.

Of course style operates at various levels. Simple rules that can be
mechanically enforced (e.g. the -gnatg rules in GNAT) are the easiest ones
for which uniformity can be achieved. Higher level style rules that are
much harder to precisely characterize are harder to enforce.

Right now, at ACT, everyone is so used to the style rules, and all the code
is in a very rigorously controlled standard style, that they share the same
set of aesthetics and consequently these higher level style rules are also
followed with remarkable consistency.