It's all about compression these days. Most pop music is compressed so much that there is no space in the music. The dynamic range is squashed in favor of bombast and getting it "heard".
Well said. I have been in the industry since '84. I'm 51 and learned very early on to keep abreast of the latest trends and technologies. I started on the maniframe doing COBOL and CICS; was in on the first wave of the move to "PC"'s and OS2/WARP in our company; wrote code in C, C++, VB6, Powerbuilder, REXX; moved on to web development and Perl/CGI, then ASP, javascript, xml, SQL server, and most recently,.Net. I took classes, attended seminars, and made my intentions clear as to where I wanted to be. I also realized that I could learn much from the "youngsters" working alongside me. Keeping my skills sharp has made me immune to the threat of obsolescence.
It's all about the attitude.
Standards won't help you figure out code. But they will allow you to go in expecting to see a uniform organization of a project, program etc. Our site uses a standard naming convention, even so far as using standard abbreviations.
Each program, class, method etc must be preceded by a comment block.
A good idea is to develop a set of templates for the types of objects you may require. We have a standards committee that establishes, reviews and amends standard practices.
At a minimum publish a set of standards/guidelines. Then require that all code be subjected to a code review. You'll be surprised how quickly the code will be up to standard. In addition code reviews will often point out areas of ambiguity in the standard or offer opportunities to add/change a standard.
As for comments, we use VBCommenter. It a plug in for.net. It automatically generates a comment block for methods, properties etc. It will also generate an xml file that, when bundled with the DLL, will provide tooltips. Once you realize that your comments are being used as tooltips via Intellisense, you tend to keep your comments up to date and meaningful. Code reviews also tend to enforce this.
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It's all about compression these days. Most pop music is compressed so much that there is no space in the music. The dynamic range is squashed in favor of bombast and getting it "heard".
Well said. I have been in the industry since '84. I'm 51 and learned very early on to keep abreast of the latest trends and technologies. I started on the maniframe doing COBOL and CICS; was in on the first wave of the move to "PC"'s and OS2/WARP in our company; wrote code in C, C++, VB6, Powerbuilder, REXX; moved on to web development and Perl/CGI, then ASP, javascript, xml, SQL server, and most recently, .Net. I took classes, attended seminars, and made my intentions clear as to where I wanted to be. I also realized that I could learn much from the "youngsters" working alongside me. Keeping my skills sharp has made me immune to the threat of obsolescence.
It's all about the attitude.
Standards won't help you figure out code. But they will allow you to go in expecting to see a uniform organization of a project, program etc. Our site uses a standard naming convention, even so far as using standard abbreviations. Each program, class, method etc must be preceded by a comment block. A good idea is to develop a set of templates for the types of objects you may require. We have a standards committee that establishes, reviews and amends standard practices. At a minimum publish a set of standards/guidelines. Then require that all code be subjected to a code review. You'll be surprised how quickly the code will be up to standard. In addition code reviews will often point out areas of ambiguity in the standard or offer opportunities to add/change a standard. As for comments, we use VBCommenter. It a plug in for .net. It automatically generates a comment block for methods, properties etc. It will also generate an xml file that, when bundled with the DLL, will provide tooltips. Once you realize that your comments are being used as tooltips via Intellisense, you tend to keep your comments up to date and meaningful. Code reviews also tend to enforce this.