Am 18.01.2013 10:29, schrieb Jonathan M Davis:
Formatting can have a huge effect on code legibility. There are plenty of cases
where slight formatting changes don't make that big a difference, but some
really can (e.g. where the braces go), and many small differences can add up.
For instance, I've known folks who used lots and lots of parens (generally not
relying on operator precedence at all), and that made the code_much_ harder
to read. Or having too much or too little whitespace can have a large effect on
how the code looks and how easy it is to read. It's a_highly_ subjective
issue, but I think that it's misguided to think that code formatting doesn't
matter. True, the semantics matter more (if nothing else, semantics matter to
the compiler, whereas formatting doesn't), but it still matters quite a bit.
don't get me wrong - coding style is very very important
but without an forced formatting standard you got following problems:
-many different coding styles in each company, sometimes even on
deparment-level, every project
->hard for project jumpers, always a need for everyone to define a standard
coding style itself: _highly_ subjective emotional thing mostly hard to
discuss in any way
->a forced standard could de-emotionalize the them a little bit
-permanent reformatting when integrating foreign code
a forced coding style could help to define a better base standard that
many will just use because of its existence
etc...
