Re: What happened to coding standard as a practice?

Another tip from Steve Hayes is that if you do develop a coding 
standard, everyone on the team should have given up something that they 
thought was important. Otherwise it becomes "Person X's" coding 
standard, rather than the team's coding standard.

Barry Unsworth (an Australian politician) once observed "it was a great 
compromise. Everyone walked away unhappy". If you can't make everyone 
happy (and I've never found a coding standard that did), it not the 
worst possible alternative.

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I picked up the 1-3 idea from 
the guys at RoleModel (who probably picked it up from someone else).

Steve

Nigel Thorne wrote:

> 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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