Should we encourage coding styles in favor of developer's autonomy, or discourage it in favor of consistency?
- by Saeed Neamati
A developer writes if/else blocks with one-line code statements like:
if (condition)
// Do this one-line code
else
// Do this one-line code
Another uses curly braces for all of them:
if (condition)
{
// Do this one-line code
}
else
{
// Do this one-line code
}
A developer first instantiates an object, then uses it:
HelperClass helper = new HelperClass();
helper.DoSomething();
Another developer instantiates and uses the object in one line:
new HelperClass().DoSomething();
A developer is more easy with arrays, and for loops:
string[] ordinals = new string[] {'First', 'Second', 'Third'};
for (i = 0; i < ordinals.Length; i++)
{
// Do something
}
Another writes:
List<string> ordinals = new List<string>() {'First', 'Second', 'Third'};
foreach (string ordinal in ordinals)
{
// Do something
}
I'm sure that you know what I'm talking about. I call it coding style (cause I don't know what it's called). But whatever we call it, is it good or bad? Does encouraging it have an effect of higher productivity of developers? Should we ask developers to try to write code the way we tell them, so to make the whole system become style-consistent?
