[Courses] Style (was Lesson Three: Basic Declarations & Expressions)

[Jenn Vesperman]

On Sat, 2002-10-12 at 01:00, Eugene Teo wrote:
> <quote who="Lorne Gutz">
> u> IMO the  'int   main( void )' is preferable and by the way
> u> main can have as many as 3 parameters.
> 
> In short, personal preference. It is important to adopt a personal
> style in developing applications.

Disclaimer: The following is my opinion, and nothing but my opinion.
Give it the weight of 'I've been working in the field for a bit more
than ten years now', but please don't treat it as 'the boss says'. I'm
speaking here as the person, and as a long-experienced programmer.



I _strongly_ discourage style pedanticism. Everyone who programs
develops their own style that works for them.

Everyone's mind works differently. Everyone's -sight- works differently.
Someone with a touch of astigmatism may not be able to see the parallel
lines in the style:

main (foo)
{
	if (bar)
	{
		baz
	}
}


That person may find that this works better for them:

main (foo) {
	if (bar) {
		baz
	} //end if (bar)
} // end main


Short form, before I write a long essay on it: people develop their own
styles for -reasons-. They may not be able to articulate their reasons.
And in single-person or small team projects, the individual style
doesn't matter. Ignore it.

In a larger project - that's what programs like indent are for. Use
them. Let people develop the code their own way, and use a prettifier
before release.



It's like monitors and screen colours. I worked with a person who
absolutely had to use white text on black. I absolutely have to use
black text on white. We both got horrendous headaches if we stared at
the other person's monitor for too long.
Did this make his good and mine bad? Or vice versa? Nope.

One day when we were discussing it, another person chimed in and said
the best colour for him was .. I forget, but it was something like light
blue on dark grey.


In short, I don't think a discussion on style is especially helpful if
it's 'this style bad, that style good'. 
A discussion that says 'I use this style and I like it because of blah'
is fine. That helps people figure out which style works for them. 

That said, many project leads try to enforce a 'project style'. In
Dancer's and my experience, such leads usually haven't programmed a lot
themselves. Our take is 'which is more important, to have your $80/hour
programmer counting tabs, or to have him adding that new feature or
tracking that bug?'


Eh. You can tell that this is a hot button for me. I'll shut up now.





Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.

jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/