Do you think a software company should impose developers a coding-style? [closed]

Answer 1

The company should impose that some style should be followed. What style that is and how deep the guidelines are should be decided collectively by the developer community in the company.

I'd definitely lay down guidelines on braces, indentation, naming etc... You write code for readability and maintainability. Always assume someone else is going to read your code. There are tools that will auto magically format your code , and you can mandate that everyone uses the tool.

If you are on .Net look at stylecop, fxcop and Resharper

Answer 2

There are plenty of good reasons for the standards to define the way the applications are developed and the way the code should look like. For example when everyone use the same standard an automatic style-checker could be used as a part of the project CI. Using the same standards improve code readability and helps to reduce the tension between team members about re-factoring the same code in different ways. Therefore:

• All the code developed by the particular team should follow precisely the same standard.
• All the code developed for a particular project should follow precisely the same standard.
• It is desirable that teams belonging to the same company use the same standard.

In an outsourcing company an exception could be made for a team working for a customer if the customer wants to enforce a standard of their own. In this case the team adopts the customer's standard which could be incompatible with the one used by their company.

Answer 3

My opinion:

• Some basic rules are good as it helps everyone to read and maintain the code
• Too many rules are bad as it stops developers innovating with clearer ways of laying out code
• Individual style can be useful to determine the history of a code file. Diff/blame tools can be used but the hint is still useful

Answer 4

I think that programmers should be able to adapt to the style of other programmers. If a new programmer is unable to adapt, that usually means that the new programmer is too stubborn to use the style of the company. It would be nice if we could all do our own thing; however, if we all code along some bast guideline, it makes debugging and maintenance easier. This is only true if the standard is well thought out and not too restrictive.

While I don't agree with everything, this book contains an excellent starting point for standards

Answer 5

Coding standards: YES. For reasons already covered in this thread.

Styling standards: NO. Your readable, is my bewildering junk, and vice versa. Good commenting and code factoring have a far greater benefit. Also gnu indent.

Answer 6

Yes.

Coding standards are a common way of ensuring that code within a certain organization will follow the Principle of Least Surprise: consistency in standards starting from variable naming to indentation to curly brace use.

Coders having their own styles and their own standards will only produce a code-base that is inconsistent, confusing, and frustrating to read, especially on larger projects.