Code Formatting - A reflection of Coding Level?
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Man, I share your frustration all the time. I work with 4 other guys who don't seem to care much about writing well formatted code in a consistent manner. I've told them that it's a good thing, but they just don't think it's that important. And like you say, it usually reflects on the quality of their work: their code ends up having more bugs which are also more difficult to fix. The thing is that I find it difficult to stress the importance of clean consistent coding because I somehow feel like I'm imposing on their ways, which I don't want to do. So once in a while I whip out my handy code reformatting macro and sanitize things a bit (at least for me). :) Regards, Alvaro
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Me too Oz. I often drive my co-workers nuts by reminding them to go back over their code and make it clearer/better formatted/better commented...:rolleyes: Have you noticed that the people with the messiest code are the ones that are most likely to take exception when someone else reformats part of it? ;P Andy Metcalfe - Sonardyne International Ltd
(andy.metcalfe@lineone.net)
http://www.resorg.co.uk"I used to be a medieval re-enactor, but I'm (nearly) alright now..."
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Poorly formatted code is a personal peeve of mine. Unfortunately, the VC++ wizards scatter code haphazardly, forcing me to go in and clean up after them. Like many other things MS does, they went half way when creating CASE tools. A few of my personal style preferences are: All variables at the top of the function, one variable per line. Variables alphabetized and tab aligned. Variables other than counters named using Hungarian notation. A comment block before every function. A comment block before every nontrivial algorithm. Comments indented to the same level as the code.
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
I generally agree. I like to make my code as pretty as time permits. But I will also have to say that some of the best programmers I have ever known were sloppy as hell at formatting their code, and didn't give a damn.
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Yes! ( :mad: + :eek: + X| + :(( )/4 (There is no single emoticon to indicate the effect of poorly formatted code on a maintainer/enhancer.) I have seen code that had, in the same .cpp file, the following: - Function opening brace begin anywhere starting at 0-8 spaces and/or 1/2tabs (making only some of them to appear at 4/8/16 characters as you go on changing the editor setting in frustrated attempts to get it right). - Variables are declared at any positions starting from 0 to 8 characters. Tab characters appear infrequently. - No comments on top of any function. Some commented out code within functions. Some old, irrelevant comments within functions. No separate Word documentation that is also applicable to the .cpp file. - The call depth in that part of code was five/six. The total call-depth would probably be 20+, not counting the incursions into user, GDI, winsock, shell, etc. A callback function and a non-prototype-declared (static global) function sat on top of those five/six member functions. - Of course, implementation of several big classes appeared in the same file. - No Hungarian notation followed. Same varibale name used to denote a VARIANT, a BSTR, a CComBSTR, a COleVariant and a char* in all these, closely related, functions. - Same variable name used for arguments and locals in the closely related functions. - Function closing brace ends at 2 chars space, mostly. The range is again 0 to two tabs. I was supposed to maintain that, as a temp contractor brought in to fix bugs. VC++ IDE facilities did help to an extent (to correct the sheer formatting nonsense) but no more. No documentation. When I protested, my manager arranged for "only one 15 minute meeting" with "our senior engineer who wrote this is now very busy with important projects at this point of time". (Who promoted?) The manager continues: "I am doing this for you because I want to have that bug fixed on priority. He will help us on my personal request. But it's unofficial. He is not a resource on this project any longer. So don't don't talk about it and don't waste his time." (Must be rocket science, what he is doing now!) The senior arrived. Shake-hands are ignored by all but a vague smile does precede the talk. "This should be pretty simple code to understand for an experienced programmer like you...." (defensively sweet tone). VC++ objects browser is launched. "There have been many people working on this part of the code, and they used different editors. We don't have a policy of imposing any one editor on peop
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Oz, since you've seen my code I'm now curious how I rate... ;P
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Oz, since you've seen my code I'm now curious how I rate... ;P
Is that a trick questions? It sure sounds like one! ;P -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
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Me too Oz. I often drive my co-workers nuts by reminding them to go back over their code and make it clearer/better formatted/better commented...:rolleyes: Have you noticed that the people with the messiest code are the ones that are most likely to take exception when someone else reformats part of it? ;P Andy Metcalfe - Sonardyne International Ltd
(andy.metcalfe@lineone.net)
http://www.resorg.co.uk"I used to be a medieval re-enactor, but I'm (nearly) alright now..."
I couldn't agree with you more. I am one of many unlucky soles who have to read/modify/enhance *very* badly formatted code. :) ;) ;P :-D :cool: Farhan Noor Qureshi
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Cleanly formatted code with useful variable names is always easier to read and understand than code that is poorly and/or non-uniformly formatted and that has odd variable declarations. Stuff like this gets caught at our code reviews, where the author is given a gentle nudge to observe our coding guidelines. Another positive outcome of our code reviews is that if I have to explain to two other seasoned developers what's going on in my code, it probably could stand to be better commented and/or rewritten. /ravi "There is always one more bug..." http://www.ravib.com ravib@ravib.com
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Poorly formatted code is a personal peeve of mine. Unfortunately, the VC++ wizards scatter code haphazardly, forcing me to go in and clean up after them. Like many other things MS does, they went half way when creating CASE tools. A few of my personal style preferences are: All variables at the top of the function, one variable per line. Variables alphabetized and tab aligned. Variables other than counters named using Hungarian notation. A comment block before every function. A comment block before every nontrivial algorithm. Comments indented to the same level as the code.
I disagree. The VC IDE does a fine job of formatting. Your complaints actually reduce down to you simply preferring a different style... but that's a religious debate that's been raging since the advent of computers. To address some of your complaints directly: > All variables at the top of the function, one variable per line. In C this is fine. In C++ this is a bad idea. Many declarations result in very expensive calls to constructors. If the flow of control dictates that a variable may not even be used declaring it at the top of the function results in unnecessary overhead. In C++ you should declare variables as close to first use as possible, and not before. > Variables other than counters named using Hungarian notation. An all together different religious debate. Hungarian notation in C++ serves very little purpose, and I've never seen it used consistently enough to be of any real help. Even the MS code (they were responsible for the advent of HN) uses HN inconsistently, at least partly due to legacy trivia (such as changes in the actual types when the switch was made from Win16 to Win32). I'm not going to try and convince you to change your preferences here, but there's a HUGE difference between poorly formatted code and code using a format different from yours. William E. Kempf
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Agree. I think there are two related issues here: code formating and code commenting. It always works best for me if both are well done. I really dislike looking at code when comments are crammed in, no spacing between lines, etc. I also dislike code where someone has found cleaver ways to put the equivalent of two simple statements into a single statement. Yes it probably runs faster, but is almost always harder to read. Given the choice I'll almost always trace performance off for more understandable code. Ed
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I disagree. The VC IDE does a fine job of formatting. Your complaints actually reduce down to you simply preferring a different style... but that's a religious debate that's been raging since the advent of computers. To address some of your complaints directly: > All variables at the top of the function, one variable per line. In C this is fine. In C++ this is a bad idea. Many declarations result in very expensive calls to constructors. If the flow of control dictates that a variable may not even be used declaring it at the top of the function results in unnecessary overhead. In C++ you should declare variables as close to first use as possible, and not before. > Variables other than counters named using Hungarian notation. An all together different religious debate. Hungarian notation in C++ serves very little purpose, and I've never seen it used consistently enough to be of any real help. Even the MS code (they were responsible for the advent of HN) uses HN inconsistently, at least partly due to legacy trivia (such as changes in the actual types when the switch was made from Win16 to Win32). I'm not going to try and convince you to change your preferences here, but there's a HUGE difference between poorly formatted code and code using a format different from yours. William E. Kempf
My previous message was poorly formatted itself. Things I find annoying about the VC IDE wizards include: Not separating wizard created functions and variables. Create a few variables and functions and see how they are laid out in the header file. Interleaving public, protected and private areas in the header file. Sticking the entire CAboutDlg class at the bottom of the app classes implementation file. Sticking the implementation of some class constructors in the header file. The list of my personal style preferences was just that - my personal style preferences. I don't expect the IDE to implement them, although it would be nice if MS followed the Hungarian notation conventions it suggests for others.
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Me too Oz. I often drive my co-workers nuts by reminding them to go back over their code and make it clearer/better formatted/better commented...:rolleyes: Have you noticed that the people with the messiest code are the ones that are most likely to take exception when someone else reformats part of it? ;P Andy Metcalfe - Sonardyne International Ltd
(andy.metcalfe@lineone.net)
http://www.resorg.co.uk"I used to be a medieval re-enactor, but I'm (nearly) alright now..."
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Well I have noticed that the developers who contribute articles to this site have always presented cleanly formatted code. Since we don't see poorly presented code here one must assume that those who don't care about the presentation of their work never have anything worthy to offer to the rest of us. One of my worst habits when taking over existing code is that I always feel the need to reformat and tidy up its appearance before I can *really* get in and read/comprehend what the code is saying. Poorly presented code is simply harder to read. :eek: Over the years as I have worked for many different clients I have always been presented with a new set of 'rules' on code formatting, usually called a 'style guide'. Since everybodys idea of style tends to be significantly different I now have a very inconsistant looking code base, which really bugs me. I would like to see the 'gurus' define THE STYLE GUIDE which I would adopt religiously, and preach it to the unconverted. I don't mind changing the style I write too, but I do hate having to change it every week. X| Regards, Robert Dickenson.
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
Some of my pet peeves are not coding in such a way as to help yourself/others when debugging. Simple stuff like the following:
void *someFunc() { return aValue;)
This is really badly written. If put a break point on it you can't see the the value of 'aValue'. Why? Becasue the stack frame is not set up. To set the stack frame up you have to switch to assembly view, and step until the stack frame has been set up. Slow, cumbersome, thoughtless. Writing it...
void *someFunc()
{
return aValue;
)solves this problem. Its a trivial fix which saves an enormous amount of time. Also not declaring constructors and destructors even if they are not used. These are often great places to put breakpoints. Likewise they should be written so that the code for them is not inline. So that editing them to put debugging code in doesn't touch the header file and cause a huge rebuild. Again trivial stuff, but a lot of people just don't get it, :-(. End Rant Stephen Kellett -- C++/Java/Win NT/Unix variants Memory leaks/corruptions/performance/system problems. UK based. Problems with RSI/WRULD? Contact me for advice.
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Some of my pet peeves are not coding in such a way as to help yourself/others when debugging. Simple stuff like the following:
void *someFunc() { return aValue;)
This is really badly written. If put a break point on it you can't see the the value of 'aValue'. Why? Becasue the stack frame is not set up. To set the stack frame up you have to switch to assembly view, and step until the stack frame has been set up. Slow, cumbersome, thoughtless. Writing it...
void *someFunc()
{
return aValue;
)solves this problem. Its a trivial fix which saves an enormous amount of time. Also not declaring constructors and destructors even if they are not used. These are often great places to put breakpoints. Likewise they should be written so that the code for them is not inline. So that editing them to put debugging code in doesn't touch the header file and cause a huge rebuild. Again trivial stuff, but a lot of people just don't get it, :-(. End Rant Stephen Kellett -- C++/Java/Win NT/Unix variants Memory leaks/corruptions/performance/system problems. UK based. Problems with RSI/WRULD? Contact me for advice.
You've touched on one of my bete-noirs. If a function *isn't used* then it shouldn't exist. If the default constructor/destructor etc is correct for a class, then you shouldn't rewrite it. When I'm reading your code, if I come across a replacement for one of the defaults, which provides exactly default behaviour, I'm left wondering whether you intended non-default behaviour and made a mistake, don't understand the default behaviour, or are mindlessly following silly coding rules. If later I find a constructor that differs trivially from default behaviour, I now have no idea whether you intended default behaviour, or not. Furthermore I would suggest that if someone writes code where setting breakpoints in default constructors/destructors is essential to debug the code, then you have far more serious problems than code layout. Dan
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
EXACTLY!!! if you code within a group of people and they can't read your code, then you are a drag on the group's efficiency and productivity. cleanly formatted code is the MINIMUM of professionalism. anything less is unprofessional hack code that needs work. my code standards for people i mentor or work with include large amounts of formatting and naming. my standards aren't nuts or 100% anal about "put a space there", but if you don't take the time to learn the easy habits of code formatting, what other more iportant code habits have you slacked off on? -John
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Is this only me and the people around me, or do you also find that cleanly formatted code is usually an indication of cleanly written code? I've been seeing more and more evidence that the experienced programmers take the time to allign and place each line of code, each variable definition, in it's neat little place. The novice and intermidiate programmers just stick code thier cursor happens to be, kind of like "this thing isn't thought out, so why bother making it pretty." I personally hate reading code with sloppy formatting, which makes it that much more frustrating. Anyone else experience this? -Oz --- Grab WndTabs from http://www.wndtabs.com to make your VC++ experience that much more comfortable...
I disagree. The reason is that I've been on the reading end of many programmers code, usually in debugging. The ones that are obsessive-compulsive about prettifing their code tend to spend more brain power on formatting the code than actually programming, and tend to make STUPID mistakes. Although it is indeed easier to fix these bugs because of their style, I don't find that neat programming leads to less bugs or better code. Also, sloppy code doesn't mean worse code, since it can be a reflection of many things. For instance, they may not have the time to make it pretty. I know one employer that thought that if the code looked too good, it meant you had too much time on your hands. Finally, some people do have a consistent style, that is easy for them to read and understand, but not so easy for other programmers to read and understand. They write better code in their own way, and would produce worse code if forced to do it in a different way.
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I disagree. The reason is that I've been on the reading end of many programmers code, usually in debugging. The ones that are obsessive-compulsive about prettifing their code tend to spend more brain power on formatting the code than actually programming, and tend to make STUPID mistakes. Although it is indeed easier to fix these bugs because of their style, I don't find that neat programming leads to less bugs or better code. Also, sloppy code doesn't mean worse code, since it can be a reflection of many things. For instance, they may not have the time to make it pretty. I know one employer that thought that if the code looked too good, it meant you had too much time on your hands. Finally, some people do have a consistent style, that is easy for them to read and understand, but not so easy for other programmers to read and understand. They write better code in their own way, and would produce worse code if forced to do it in a different way.
I think the only thing this thread proves is that generalization is always a bad thing. That said.... sloppy code indicates sloppy thinking. Everyone makes mistakes. Consider: - If you don't have time to make the code neat, you probably don't have time to make it work right. Doing code in a hurry is a recipe for error. - Making bugs easier to find and fix results in fewer bugs. How can anyone argue that point?