I believe like John that written coding standards - without a respected and accepted person who enforces these standards and is capable (and has time) to talk, teach and explain to the coders why the standards are useful etc. - do no good.
I once met a guy who had such a job. He has now retired. He was a kind of "code inspector" in the company, some 100 developers. All PL/1 programs had to pass his desk; he also supported the coders when there were errors or programming problems. He was very esteemed and respected, although he often did not accept the programs in the first place. But I have the impression that there are not much persons like that in today's companies, and if so, such jobs would be considered non-productive by management and probably eliminated. Kind regards Bernd Am 10.02.2012 20:50, schrieb John Gilmore:
David de Jongh wrote <begin snippet> I disagree with John Gilmore's assertion that "coding police" do more harm than good - we have strict coding standards and a code quality inspector who has probably the worst job in the department, but makes sure that all code conforms. </end snippet> He is and should be entirely free to do so. Controversy is useful. My own experience has been that 1) coding standards always go too far, regulating minutæ; 2) coding standard are often retrograde; they too often mummify obsolescent notions; 3) coding standards, developed usually to give guidance to programmers of 'junior understanding', prevent others from using technology they do understand; 4) coding standards are often vague, like the injunction found in many COBOL shops' programming standards to avoid 'negative logic'; 5) coding standards enshrine dubious practices; 4) coding standards deflect attention from apprenticeship and mentoring schemes useful for teaching people how to write better code, diverting it to enforcement activities; 5) coding standards too often embody an ideology--strong typing, say--that is dubious; etc., etc. Functional standards--naming conventions, calling-sequence conventions, and the like--are of course useful, even indispensable. Justice Holmes made my case long ago when he said, "Rules are for clerks . . . " I regularly look at clients' programming-standards manuals; I have yet to see one that was not uninformed and small-minded; and most are preoccupied with some notion of maintainability that confounds simple and simplistic. More often than not they are dead letters too, and this is as well. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
