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Does Coding Style Matter?
theodp writes "Over at Smashing Magazine, Nicholas C. Zakas makes the case for Why Coding Style Matters. 'Coding style guides are an important part of writing code as a professional,' Zakas concludes. 'Whether you're writing JavaScript or CSS or any other language, deciding how your code should look is an important part of overall code quality. If you don't already have a style guide for your team or project, it's worth the time to start one.' So, how are coding style guidelines working (or not) in your world?"
At my workplace, we just all plug the same code style settings into our IDEs, and everyone's code gets formatted the same way automatically. And yes, it matters: having everyone's code formatted the same way makes it much easier to read.
I've always preferred to use tabs over spaces for indentation, 2 breaks in between major sections or functions, and clearly named vars or functions. The kind of code most people can drop into and say "Oh, I see where this is going" and immediately begin to understand and therefore modify.
I can't stand opening up any type of code, even web pages, and finding ugly difficult-to-follow lines which seemingly make no sense. Then again, it's all a matter of preference and perspective, isn't it?
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Learn one word: consistency.
Be consistent from one piece of code to the next, from one project to the next. Be consistent about your design ideas, be consistent in your thinking. It's going to help you and anybody else working on the same stuff.
Everything else is sugar.
You can't handle the truth.
I don't really care how you *format* your code. Do you put the brackets on the same line as the beginning statement? Do you put a space between the function name and parentheses? Do you double-space your code? I don't give a fuck. That's all syntax. It's easy to figure out.
Coding style is more important to me, how the actual *code* works. Do you initialize your variables as soon as possible? Do you properly use for loops and while loops? If you use recursion, does it make sense? Do you give your variables meaningful names like $activityType, or useless ones like $_a? How do you decide when to break something out into a function?
I work on a project with several other people. We all have our unique styles, both for format and for code. I, for instance, have been told I code with a "LISP accent", rarely storing the return values of a function in a variable, rather using the return value as an argument to another function. Another puts a blank line between nearly any two statements. Another assiduously follows some code formatting standard nobody else in the company has read.
Although it can make it harder to work on each other's code, it has one benefit - you can easily tell who wrote the code. "Putting the braces on a new line? This must be Pete's code!" or "There's an underscore at the front of every variable name? This must be Jimmy's code!" or "There's a for loop that starts ''for (;;){''? This must be Kevin's code!".
And if I do go in to "someone else's code" and change or fix things, I follow their style, more or less. Unless I'm completely rewriting a section, or making enough of a change that it should be considered a rewrite.
Coding style is not just be about making code look pretty (according to someone's personal definition of pretty). The purpose of a coding standard is to make the code more readable and thus, more understandable. Having the code look consistent helps in that regard.
Most of the time as a programmer is not spent on producing code but on skimming through other people's code and trying to figure out how something works, or why something doesn't work. Time is money, and it is better that a code writer spends a few extra seconds on making the code more readable than a code reader spending maybe fifteen minutes on the same piece of code because he misunderstood some detail of it the first time around because it was written in a weird way.
There are some things that are more important than whitespace and braces, that are too often overlooked. A coding style/code standard should also include conventions for code patterns, comments and how to choose reasonable variable names ... and these things can not be changed by a "pretty printer".
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The best article that I've ever read on coding style is Style is Substance by Ken Arnold.
I won't repeat what he has to say here, because he explains it better than I could. But I wish that more programming languages would follow what he is advocating, because we waste way too much time arguing about braces and tabs.
Ctrl+K, Ctrl+F
Presto, you've got your coding style for code that you didn't write.
Doesn't work for me. Ctrl+K deletes the current line, and Ctrl+F moves the cursor forward one character. What version of emacs are you using?
My does:
My don'ts list is getting shorter and shorter. Most programmers have reasons why they produce the code the way they do. Lack of experience should be met with understanding and appreciation for improvements.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
No, really he's not. I am quite capable of reading code with different indent styles, brace styles, etc. I do so on a regular basis, even when working with language approved styles as I regularly program in multiple languages. I have no trouble with it mixing program to program, file to file, or even function to function.
In fact, most code bases I've worked on looked like that. And there was no noticable speedup in places that did enforce a style vs those that didn't.
In fact, he actually tends to harm code quality. Why? Because he bogs down code reviews. Rather than looking for serious maintenance or correctness problems, we focus on his half dozen style complaints. This wastes our time and causes people to hate code reviews, or take them less seriously. The places I've worked with style guidelines all had shitty code review processes, and this was the reason.
So no, that anal retentive asshole made everyone's job far worse. There are code style issues that matter, like naming variables well and commenting sufficiently. Formatting is not one of them, and being particularly picky about it is a BIG red flag about both a person and a company.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?