Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 01:06:03 -0800 From: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com> Cc: Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Style(9) question Message-ID: <20021124090603.GA3172@HAL9000.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <8gof8g83w4.f8g@localhost.localdomain> References: <20021122193040.GA23078@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20021122214405.GA11011@HAL9000.homeunix.com> <8gof8g83w4.f8g@localhost.localdomain>
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Thus spake Gary W. Swearingen <swear@attbi.com>: > The OP's complaint might better have been a form of: "there are too many > requirements in the style guide, and this is one example of a > requirement which, regardless of the merit of the particular style in > each developer's mind (or that of whoever controls the style guide), > costs more than it is worth for these reasons: Yes, a few of the requirements in style(9) are unnecessary, but I don't think they're worth debating. For an example of a *really* pedantic style guide, see GNU's coding guidelines. (From what I can tell by looking at GNU software, few people actually follow it.) > "1) People waste more time fixing intrusions of the illegal style than > would be spent by people illegally changing other people's style if > there were no requirement (those changes being a well-known no-no). Some people are just that way. They see something that isn't asthetically pleasing to them, so they `fix' it. Style(9) is merely their justification. While it annoys me when someone makes a bunch of whitespace changes in /etc, I'm willing to live with it. > "2) The additional requirement screens out some potential developers who > won't agree (even grudgingly) to develop under one too many requirements > which they consider lame and over-burdensome. What you say is generally true about open source software, but it's a stretch to apply your reasoning to style(9). I don't think a good programmer is going to shy away from the FreeBSD Project because we ask that control statements with single-statement consequents have no braces. If we asked that no less than one third and no more than two fifths of all statements be preceded by the word `please', that would be another story. ;-) > "3) The assumed benefit of a particular standard style has not been > demonstrated, the style being more likely to be just a idiosyncratic > artifact of a once-influential developer who got his way as a sort of > ego-payment for services rendered." Many of the requirements exist because nobody cares enough to reformat all of the code in a new style. That's probably why you see a number of K&R-isms as well. If you want to change style(9), the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that some requirement is wrong and harmful; you can't just say ``the benefit [of the style] has not been demonstrated.'' Standards aren't always the best solutions, but people still use them because they understand the value of having standards. (At this point, Terry will probably chime in with some witty comment about standards.) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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