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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?"
...yes but not very much a all. Nothing beats clear thinking.
Need Mercedes parts ?
because when you leave\get fired\DIE, everyone can read your code and not have to interpret it, thus productivity gained.
I find it impossible to believe that anyone has actually lost hundreds of hours in reviews due to style, unless they were purposely not following what are usually pretty simple guidelines.
The differences between one style and another are meaningless, but the value of having a consistent style across an entire codebase is, in my experience, enormous. If everyone can read your code as though it was their own, that does in fact save hundreds of hours of time across the team.
Listing the meaning of every acronym, no matter how well known, that's my favorite part of document reviews.
Coding standards save the hundreds of hours of somebody else going through your code and re-indenting it all so that you can't diff it any more.
We live in the future, why don't our tools enforce these standards automagically?
Some do. As the developer it's your job to make sure it happens, however you do it.
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
Was the nit picker correct? That is, was he pointing out true variances from the standard? If so, the fastest way to appease him is to cram your ego and make the changes. If you're arguing about something that is clearly spelled out in the coding standard, then YOU are the one who is wasting time by arguing about it. If not, and the nit picker is just slinging shit, then call him out for wasting time in meetings.
Consistent naming is important. It lets you quickly call into libraries that other people have written without having to double check, "was that camel cased or underscored spaced?"
But nit-picking over whitespace is simply annoying. Any person who insists on that much compliance might be trying to compensate for lack of performance in more important areas.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
It's a test on following orders and attention to detail. We don't need any of you rogue coders 'round here, see?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
With such poor standards as white space and curly braces, write a pretty routine to clean it up. One to convert to your standard and one to convert back to theirs.
I come for the world of 6 upper charter names names for fields/columns. There naming conventions mean something becuase every is abbrivated. We keep or stnadards on single sheet of paper to so that could be followed.
Now get of my lawn!
This guy thinks he's the shit programming wise and thus has to do his own thing. He's too good to be bound by the rules of everyone else. So he keeps fucking up and then crying about it.
His company should just can him.
If you're whining about the details of coding standards, if probably means you aren't good enough to whine about something important.
I've used numerous different coding standards for numerous different languages; every project and every team seems to have it's own standard. Just learn their preferences, use them and get code done. Very few coding standards are bad enough to care about. Usually a project has far more important issues to address than whether you should use PascalCase or camelCase.
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I think designing and writing code is a form of art, and you wouldn't tell a painter how to to draw his strokes, or a writer to always write sentences in a well defined style.
Hahahahaha. When companies pay writers or artists to work on a shared piece they sure as hell mandate all those things.
Do you think all the artwork in a game has consistent style by some black magic? Hell no, all the artists are told what style to adhere to and they do. Same with writing. Same when artists collaborate. Would you want to read a book that randomly switched fonts and writing styles every few paragraphs?
If you want to do your own thing then fine but don't expect to do so on someone else's dime. They're paying you to work as part of a team, stop being a whinny immature child.
Standards and enforcement of same is (usually) a symptomp of the "interchangeable morons" school of management. It presumes that all problems have a (ayn rand-ish) uniform solution that all _programmers_ will process identically.
A small number of "do not do"s with a "unless you have good cause" _guidelines_ are reasonable, but something as firm as a "standard" is a great way to make your great programmers no better than your worst over time.
Standards often contain bugs themselves. Things that create a hidden cost on the programmer and the program that can bog both down.
examples:
Even Microsofte eventually abandoned their "Standard" for putting the variable type as encoded dirt on the front of their varialbe names such as "lpintThingy" having plagued their code with Thingies that are no longer long pointers to integers and that cannot be globally searched and replaced because that hazards destroying other code.
Combined rule failure (use getters and setters + don't put member function definitions inside of class definitions => what would be a register load operation becomes an optimization resistant far call across translation units ** every dang time you set or read a scalar).
If you cannot trust your programmers to write good code then making them format it so it _looks_ like good code is a wasted effort.
If you cannot trust your great programmers to write great code eventually they will stop even trying to do so and you will be left with a hassle avoiding idiot or someone looking for a new job.
If you cannot trust your new programmers to understand your previous code then your new programmers are probably inferrior to your older coders.
If you are not winnowing out the _bad_ programmers via rational code review then your management is useless.
All but the most rudimentary coding guidelines are productivity and creativity and performance murderers.
Every company eventually realizes this, on and off, for a while, each time a management team ages into a job, and then forgets it again when they hire new managers.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press