Re: Bad coding standards - aesthetics are irrelevant

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Bruce or Tracy <bljacobs@hiwaay.net> writes:

>   My_Package_Name.My_Procedure_Name (Track_Number,Meters_Till_Impact, 
>   Seconds_Till_Impact,Azimuth,Elevation,Range,Delay_In_Seconds);
> 
> instead of:
> 
>   My_Package_Name.My_Procedure_Name 
>     (The_Track_Number        => Track_Number, 
>      The_Meters_From_Target  => Meters_From_Targer,
>      The_Seconds_Till_Impact => Seconds_Till_Impact,
>      The_Weapon_Azimuth      => Azimuth,
>      The_Weapon_Elevation    => Elevation,
>      The_Weapon_DownRange    => Range,
                                  ^^^^^---------------- probably not!

>      The_Seconds_Delay       => Delay_In_Seconds);
> 
> Some have even more arguments than this example.  The coders are
> very good, smart coders, they just aren't "tidy", which makes
> maintenance extremely difficult, especially when you have 400-500
> lines of this kind of format in single procedure.

I don't see really how you (your company) can know they are
'smart'. Slapdash is not smart.

One of my mentors used to refuse to look at documents with untidy
diagrams (this was in the days when the diagrams had to be drawn on
the stencil by hand) on the grounds that if you couldn't be bothered
to produce tidy work you probably hadn't bothered with the content
either.

Of course you have to be wary of the 'whited sepulchre', but in my
experience incompetents don't succeed at producing them either!

I noticed the 'The_Whatever' style -- this was the old Booch
recommendation, I think. But even then it struck me as a desperate
measure -- really you need to think about the names in the context
that the subprogram must be called. Not always possible, of course!