Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!timbuk!cs.umn.edu!ub.d.umn.edu!rutgers!mcdchg!tellab5!balr!clrcom!rmartin
From: rmartin@clear.com (Bob Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Coding Standards.  was: a style question
Summary: Coding Standards
Message-ID: <1990Nov10.191840.21113@clear.com>
Date: 10 Nov 90 19:18:40 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.160116.10299@athena.mit.edu> <13@christmas.UUCP> <14369@smoke.brl.mil>
Organization: Clear Communications, Inc.
Lines: 26

In article <14369@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>
>Often, because it was written by amateurs, or at any rate hackers who
>have not learned the magnitude of the maintenance problem for 
>production software.

The lack of standard coding practice IS a big problem for software
maintenance.  At Clear we have instituded a style standard which
all our engineers follow.  This standard specifies how indenting
should be done, how variables, functions and types should be named.
I specifies that functions should have single entrance and single
exit points, and that functions should not be much longer then
one page.  It specifies a documentation style and demands that
comments always be placed on closing braces.  etc. etc.

One might think that engineers would resist this kind of "infringement
on their creativity"  But in fact we have found that most engineers
want to have standards like this since they can then read each others
code easily and channel their creativity towards the problem instead
of towards the style.

-- 
+-Robert C. Martin-----+---------------------------------------------+
| rmartin@clear.com    | My opinions are mine.  They aren't anybody  |
| uunet!clrcom!rmartin | elses.  And thats the way I want to keep it.|
+----------------------+---------------------------------------------+