Rant

[Gendo]

See, the thing about coding is that it's an art form. One that is refined over a long period of time. As a programmer spends more and more years programming, he learns various ways to accomplish things. He also adopts a style that is personal to him.

Sometimes different programmers have different styles and preferences, and that's ok. Nothing wrong with one person doing things one way, and another person, on the same team working on the same project, doing things a different way. What matters is if it's done well. There's no reason for all code to look identical, like you can't tell who did which part. So when you spend who-knows-how-many hours discussing "coding standards", debating over whether code should look one particular way or another, that's all just wasted time.

But hey, if we are going to enforce this idea of making everything look identical, how about we at least go with the way that practically ALL programmers do it? You know, the way that Microsoft themselves recommend you do it? The way that every code example you find online looks? The way that doesn't require typing the exact same long thing twice in a row when it could just as easily be only typed once?

You know, like actually listening to the guy who's been doing this for 10 straight years and probably knows what he's talking about? The guy who can actually get things done if he's left alone to do them, and not stuck in meetings where it's being decided that he should have to do things differently; to do things in a way that will cause even more wasted time. So yeah, instead of actually doing my job and getting stuff done, I get to waste time making sure I type out extra repeated crap that accomplishes nothing!

Yeah, this all goes back to what I talked about a few months ago: http://forum.pittersplace.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=996" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. I thought it was all resolved back then; but apparently my boss really didn't want to get involved; he wanted the team to work it out among ourselves.

[/rant]

[aels]

Work is the worst.

[Anakin McFly]

I extend my sympathies, and I'm so glad right now that I'm the sole programmer at my company, and no one in management knows enough about coding to give me guidelines on how they think I should do it.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

See, the thing about coding is that it's an art form. One that is refined over a long period of time. As a programmer spends more and more years programming, he learns various ways to accomplish things. He also adopts a style that is personal to him.

Sometimes different programmers have different styles and preferences, and that's ok. Nothing wrong with one person doing things one way, and another person, on the same team working on the same project, doing things a different way. What matters is if it's done well. There's no reason for all code to look identical, like you can't tell who did which part. So when you spend who-knows-how-many hours discussing "coding standards", debating over whether code should look one particular way or another, that's all just wasted time.

But hey, if we are going to enforce this idea of making everything look identical, how about we at least go with the way that practically ALL programmers do it? You know, the way that Microsoft themselves recommend you do it? The way that every code example you find online looks? The way that doesn't require typing the exact same long thing twice in a row when it could just as easily be only typed once?

You know, like actually listening to the guy who's been doing this for 10 straight years and probably knows what he's talking about? The guy who can actually get things done if he's left alone to do them, and not stuck in meetings where it's being decided that he should have to do things differently; to do things in a way that will cause even more wasted time. So yeah, instead of actually doing my job and getting stuff done, I get to waste time making sure I type out extra repeated crap that accomplishes nothing!

Yeah, this all goes back to what I talked about a few months ago: http://forum.pittersplace.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=996" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. I thought it was all resolved back then; but apparently my boss really didn't want to get involved; he wanted the team to work it out among ourselves.

[/rant]

This post causes me conflict - having programmed for nearly 20 years I can both agree that programming is a personal kinda thing that is as much art as it is a kinda science, I can also attest that programming standards are a genuine thing of beauty that fixes all sorts of long term and short term problems if implemented correctly and totally fucks everything up if they are not. And what generally is considered "a good programming standard" depends enormously on what perspective you are looking at the code from - whether that be performance, simplicity, maintainability or risk.

I've definitely developed standards that restrict what verbs programmers can use for the most excellent reason that some verbs cause way too much overhead when there is usually a simpler, less "look at how many verbs in this language I know" way. I have no idea for how front end languages work and only ever work with compiled code .. and that's where the problems always lie .. what looks like a simple line of code compiles into a whole bunch of machine code that actually executes and causes the over head.

I Ban things like "Goto" statements simply because of the opportunity for program logic to drop thru .. I set limits on how deep a nested if can run for maintainability .. and most of all I have standards around commenting code and formatting the code so everything is readable.

So - while I think programming is something that has a personal component to it - tons of programmers are more concerned with showing off what they know with no considerations for how easy it is for other people to understand their code, and so, maintain it .. or how well that code performs (this is a big deal in the MF space given all costs are ultimately tied to MIPS or MSU's) .. or making their code extensible enuff so that other people can add to it easily without having to do a complete rewrite.
Good programming standards are about the most important thing a coding shop can enforce

[Gendo]

Yeah, the particular thing I'm talking about is purely style-based. Both options compile to the exact same thing.

I'm all for standards when they help prevent demonstrable problems. But here, the style they've adopted does nothing other than cause our code to look different than every bit of sample c# code out there that you find. It causes you to repeat the exact same thing twice for no benefit; to spend more time typing unneeded things.

[Gypsy-Vanner]

This thread is full of nerd.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I agree. I've come across these sorts of people too and I always think they probably don't know what they're talking about/don't have enough to do/just want to show that they have some authority over people for the sake of showing they have some authority/only have a really tenuous understanding of it and if it's not written "just so" they can't follow it themselves.

They have no place managing people at all - let alone people that almost certainly know more about this subject than they do.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

This thread is full of nerd.

Nerd is the new black