Ask Slashdot: Do Coding Standards Make a Difference?

An anonymous reader writes "Every shop I've ever worked in has had a 'Coding Style' document that dictates things like camelCase vs underscored_names, placement of curly braces, tabs vs spaces, etc. As a result, I've lost hundreds of hours in code reviews because some pedant was more interested in picking nits over whitespace than actually reviewing my algorithms. Are there any documents or studies that show a net productivity gain for having these sorts of standards? If not, why do we have them? We live in the future, why don't our tools enforce these standards automagically?"

Comments

Most Java shops I've worked automate code style

[neiras]

We have always had standardized checkstyle and jtidy rules as part of our build system. We have eclipse formatting configuration that everyone uses as well. Commits don't happen unless checkstyle is happy.

I thought everyone did this. I guess tooling is less developed in some languages, but it's not too hard to put this kind of thing into practice with a little bit of effort and buy-in.

It helps

[Cro Magnon]

Once I was put on a project with rather strict standards. I didn't like their naming conventions, and the style was noticeably different from mine. But I soon found that whichever of their programs I was assigned to, it was relatively easy to follow because of the similarity with the other programs in that system. In contrast, the system I'd been on before had no standards, and everyone did things their own way (including me), and I had to study each new program before making any significant changes.