Coding Standards: How Important Are They?
2/20/2007 12:28:13 PM
Started reading a very interesting article this morning on the importance of coding standards. This article is particulary interesting to me because of the nature of the work that I do on a day-to-day basis: custom software development. Now while working in custom software development I have heard many conflicting thoughts and practices when it comes to standards. In a perfect world, I would agree with the camp that likes to have every developer stick to a certain set of standards and practices. Reality is that deadlines sometimes put a damper on doing things the right way.
How do you cope with this? I hate to start a project using standardized practices and then told to make shortcuts to meet a tight deadline. I know that custom software development is a little more fast-paced than an in-house development job, but I would assume that managers would put a priority on consistency. When the project is done and delivered I don`t care if the person that takes over my job thinks they could write better code. It is more important for me leave them with code that is easy to follow and make adjustments to. Consistency is key.
Some of my "favorite" malpractices:
| Technology |
Malpractice |
My Practice |
| SQL Server (table name) |
tbl_Mstr_Stdnt_Schdl |
MasterStudentSchedule |
| SQL Server (field) |
Univ_Crs_ID |
UniversityCourseId |
| .NET (variable) |
str_Stdnt_ID |
studentId |
| .NET (handler name) |
Button28_Click |
SubmitSchedule_Click |
I know that there are those of you that would go about things in different ways. Like the article above states, "Show me code written by ten developers and I'll show you ten different coding styles." I think one thing we can all agree on is that the malpractices above are in no way excusable.
Some of you might notice that I use Id instead of ID. I have seen that the field seems to be split on this. I like to think of Id being a common enough convention that one not need to capitalize both letters, much like System.IO.
What are your thoughts?
Business,
Development,
Programming
