code aesthetics

Scott Dorman

Tom deketelaere wrote:

Well I'v managed to reduce it to one programme now that doens't need much maintenance or altering, but whenever it does I end up with headache's from hell.

At least it sounds like you've managed to isolate it fairly well.

Tom deketelaere wrote:

I'm now in the process of doing the same for a client of us so I guess I'm heading the same direction as you, but I'm shure I'm just a noob in comparison ;P

Feel free to email any time. I've been playing in this space at varying degrees over the last 15 years and I'm more than happy to share whatever experiences I've learned. I really like the Framework Design Guidelines book. It is focused on .NET and designing public facing APIs but at least 90% of the guidelines specified apply to any language. The other one (although more for a really solid reference and background information) is the Ada 95 Quality and Style Guide. (If you can't find it, email me directly from CP and I can email it to you.) There is also a slide deck (it's short but a lot of the slides have speaker notes) available on my blog from the round-table discussion I usually run on this topic if you want to browse through it. (Go to my public SkyDrive folder link.)

Scott Dorman

Microsoft® MVP - Visual C# | MCPD President - Tampa Bay IASA [Blog][Articles][Forum Guidelines]

Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai

Scott Dorman

williamFalconerUK wrote:

I'm currently working for a company where coding standards are talked about but there has been no agreement on a definitive guideline. The result of this being that each person has their own way of doing things, leading to the problem that the code can be difficult to understand and maintain. It also appears that theres resistance to any move to try to standardise, the reason being that the people involved have their own opinions so we get nowhere further with the discussion. Another excuse given is theres "no time" to sort things like this out.

Those are certainly some common problems.

williamFalconerUK wrote:

when you have implemented such standards in existing development teams, what kind of hurdles have you encountered? and how did you manage to overcome them? I'd like to see if theres an approach that could be taken to get a bunch of developers (and their managers) who are set in their own ways to agree the standard and stick to them (not that I'm in a position currently to push for this, but who knows!)

You already hit on some, but adding to that...there are a lot of different problems you can (and probably will) run in to depending on the size and makeup of the team. Each person feeling that "their way is best" and being resistant to change are the most common from the development team. The best way to overcome this is to get them involved in the decision making process and keep things small. Don't have one long meeting where you try to reach consensus for the entire standard. Instead, break it up into smaller more focused meetings. This is espcially important if you want to deal with the "holy war" type issues (things like curly brace placement, tab sizes, etc.) For those issues (and any issue that generates a lot of heated debate) the best approach I have found is to sit quietly in the room and let the two sides argue for a bit (no more than an hour). Eventually everyone will become so tired of the back and forth that you can step in and suggest a compromise based on what you heard from both sides. That's the key - you need to make both sides understand that you have been listening to the entire argument, that you see the benefits in both options and that you aren't taking sides but merely suggesting a compromise. This doesn't always work but it is relatively effective. When it doesn't work sometimes you either have to mandate a guideline or decide tha

Theodore M Seeber

I think I've yet to meet three programmers on a team who all agree on what aesthetics are. consistent yes, within one coder's code. Which is practically useless. I find algorithm complexity to be far more beautiful than the spacing in the original code- but then again, I can READ CODE, rather than READ COMMENTS. Having said that- you'll always find indentation in my code, because I specifically find I have a problem with remembering to close multi-line groups. Other than that- well, that's all personal aesthetics, and asethetics are *always* subjective.

WilliamFalconerUK

Scott, Pretty much you've hit the nail on the head. And you've given some good arguments to take away and use to help things along...

Scott Dorman wrote:

Eventually everyone will become so tired of the back and forth that you can step in and suggest a compromise based on what you heard from both sides. That's the key - you need to make both sides understand that you have been listening to the entire argument, that you see the benefits in both options and that you aren't taking sides but merely suggesting a compromise.

I'm pretty much more of a listener in these things than a talker so what you suggest might be the move that could be made, specially considering the arguments are of the "holy war" type you speak of, and they do end up getting nowhere.

Scott Dorman wrote:

Getting buy-in from the developers is usually easier than getting buy-in from management. Managements arguement is almost always "we don't have the time/resources/budget to spend", which is usually the case. However, you need to be able to show that by not having a standard in place it is harder to transition people from one project to another, harder to diagnose and correct problems, and ultimately leads to a less stable code base. This is, of course, almost all subjective as it is difficult to actually put numbers to any of these concepts.

As for the management thing, I think I'll have the opportunity to talk about this and the other concerns I have with them as a review is coming up. if that doesn't work then maybe one of the other approaches need to be taken.

Scott Dorman wrote:

It usually ends up being a combination. Some things can be defined by one person and then presented to the team; others will need consensus or at least involvment from other people on the team. This is especially important if you have "entrenched" developers who are very resistant to change. By getting them involved, they feel they are being given a voice and included in the process. Sometimes that's all it takes to get them to open up and embrace the new ideas.

This may well be the way forward, if no one else takes the lead, then maybe with the right prep, good information under my belt and a good presentation I could do it...and involvement from the team certainly will help! Once again i'll take all the advice on board, so thanks! :) Also if anyone knows of any good

stephen hazel

Ah, 1 inch margins... An inch will fit about 10 chars so that's where the 20 went. I just tested the crappy ole hp laserjet we got here at work. With no margins, Consolas 8 will give you 129 columns by 81 rows. But like I said, I'm with you. 80 columns is best. That way there's PLENTY of room on the right to scribble notes. I mean, you can stare at the screen only so long ... before you go insaaaaane

T Mac Oz

harold aptroot wrote:

give me a headache

My other half has the same problem, the place she used to work did a company-wide rollout of new LCDs as the new standard issue equipment & she just couldn't work on one. Headache would build up over the course of a day & take days to go away. At home we bought a 46" Bravia X which we had to take back too 'coz she couldn't watch it :(( . Luckily, we were able to do a straight-out swap for a Panasonic Viera 50" :-D .