Re: What happened to coding standard as a practice?

I don't find official coding standards are required if you are working
with a team of experiences developers. They are an aid to
communication. Most experienced developers write easy to read code.

I'm a fan of just in time coding standards. They are only needed when
people dissagree strongly about how something should look. A that
point if the conflicting people cannot decide (see below), get the
team together, vote, and write the decision on the wiki (with reasons
behind the decision).

A tip I picked up from Steve Hayes was to get the two team members in
conflict to vote 1 - 3 on how strongly they feel about the issue.
Strongest wins. If they can't resolve it then all work is stopped
while a quick issue resolution meeting is held.  To stop all issues
escalating to a team meeting get the two conflicting people to also
explain to the team why they couldn't decide this issue between
themselves. This is ususally enough that the person that feels least
strongly about the issue backs down.

cheers
Nigel Thorne
www.nigelthorne.com

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:42:17 -0500, Jeff Nielsen
<jeff.nielsen-FlpYSvOe4acxC8njFv0dvw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm sitting here writing a little piece about the benefits of having a team 
> coding standard.  I was quoting something I heard Kent say at a conference 
> about how "Standardizing on the smallest scale enables flexibility at the 
> larger scale."
> 
> Then I got to wondering why "Coding standard" is no longer a practice in 
> XP2E.  I assume it falls under the umbrella of "Shared Code".  But perhaps 
> there is/was a general sentiment in the community that having a team coding 
> standard no longer rises to the level of an important practice.
> 
> I have found implementing a coding standard to be a very useful first step 
> in getting a team to start working as a team.  While sometimes painful, 
> having a coding standards discussion encourages people to examine whether 
> they're willing to change their individual behavior for the good of the 
> team.  Almost no one that I coached has questioned the value of having a 
> team standard in conjunction with collective code ownership.
> 
> So I guess I'm asking for others' experience and thoughts.
> 
> Jeff Nielsen
> Chief Scientist
> Digital Focus (www.digitalfocus.com) 
> 
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