Evolution in coding standards, how do you deal with them?

Posted by WardB on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by WardB
Published on 2011-01-17T09:10:06Z Indexed on 2011/01/17 9:59 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 405

Filed under:

coding-standards

|

coding-style

|

Maintenance

How do you deal with evolution in the coding standards / style guide in a project for the existing code base? Let's say someone on your team discovered a better way of object instantiation in the programming language. It's not that the old way is bad or buggy, it's just that the new way is less verbose and feels much more elegant. And all team members really like it. Would you change all exisiting code?

Let's say your codebase is about 500.000+ lines of code. Would you still want to change all existing code? Or would you only let new code adhere to the new standard? Basically lose consistency?

How do you deal with an evolution in the coding standards on your project?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about coding-standards

iPhone/Cocoa Coding Standards

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Are there any generally-accepted coding standards (naming, casting etc) that apply specifically to iPhone/Cocoa/Objective-C? I know Microsoft has published similar standards as they relate to .Net and C# but haven't run across anything related to the iPhone world. >>> More
How to make developers follow coding standards?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How can I make developers follow coding standards? In our company: I've given documents and they don't have the patience to read it and follow it. I've tried telling them again and again "please do it this way" they nod their heads, but still do it the wrong way We're doing a project for the third… >>> More
Coding standards

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
This post will be about coding standards. There are countless articles and blog posts related to this topic, so I know this post will not be too revealing. Yet I would like to mention a few things I came across during my work with the T-SQL code. Naming convention - there are many of them obviously… >>> More
Quick example: why coding standards must be in place

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
One quick example why coding standards must be in place. Take a look at the following code – property names are changed but not anything else. public string Property1 { get; set; } public string Property2 { get; set; } … >>> More
Better Coding Standards in JavaScript 5

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
JavaScript 5 (ECMAScript 5) has just been released and it promises to bring stricter code and better coding standards to the table. To learn more about this exciting new update to the Internet's workhorse, read on. >>> More

Related posts about coding-style

Which coding style is more common?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
In no way shape or form am i advertising/promoting my programming style, but as far as 'multiple variable declarations' are concerned, which case is more acceptable professionally and commonly: case 1: private $databaseURL = "localhost" ; private $databaseUName = "root" ; private $databasePWord… >>> More
Is my javascript coding style following best-practice?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
What is the 'best practise' with regard to coding style. Should I use _ for private members? Should I use this._privateMember? Please re-write my code in proper style if its wrong: (function()){ var _blah = 1; someFunction = function() { alert(_blah); }; someOtherFunction… >>> More
Java coding style

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How do you keep yourself coding to standards? There is stylecop and resharper for C#. Are there any tools/eclipse plugins for code analisys in Java? Which of them do you use? >>> More
Common coding style for Python?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I'm pretty new to Python, and I want to develop my first serious open source project. I want to ask what is the common coding style for python projects. I'll put also what I'm doing right now. 1.- What is the most widely used column width? (the eternal question) I'm currently sticking to 80… >>> More
Have you changed your coding style recently? It wasn't hard wasn't it?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I've used to write code in C-like languages using the Allman style, regarding the position of braces. void foo(int bar) { if(bar) { //... } else return; //... } Now the last two years I have been working mostly in JavaScript and when we adopted jslint as part of our QA process… >>> More