The bane of procrastinating programmers at critical deadlines has been coding standards, for as long as there have even been coding standards. The dreaded “typo at line 234” has perpetually haunted me on sleepless nights since having to adhere to coding standards in my IDE during ICS 111. Just like how fixing a small segment of code can lead to the proverbial slaying of the hydra’s heads that is stomping out new bugs, errors in coding standards pop up like weeds after trying to reformat one line to follow the guidelines.
Coding standards have caused me a lot of headaches in the past. While some standards are easy enough to follow by simply using your IDE’s auto format option, more often than not you will despise the strict guidelines set by many guides. The most common issue is having to create typo exceptions for words that aren’t actually typos. Usually this refers to a string or a function with a name that is similar to a common word, or a word from a language other than english. The mini panic attack that you get when trying to compile code only to see it throw an error is never a great experience. This is especially common when compiling a larger project for the first time, typos seem to be more common than correct spelling and apparently all of your libraries don’t have a path in the local files. The worst of this comes when using provided files in your project. There’s nothing more unsatisfying than seeing a file that you cannot change throw an error due to it breaking coding standards, and from then on you will always remember this header file or whatever it may be as that one file you have to create an exception for every implementation. On the bright side however, this perpetual headache gives you the perfect opportunity to review your code for real errors.
Coding standards most definitely have their place in the world of programming. As much as I can go on and on about all of the issues that following standards has given me in the past, I must acknowledge that they are incredibly useful. First and foremost, it makes your code very readable. The entire point of standardized coding is to make your code accessible to others, the formatting and naming conventions are all in place so that someone who has never seen your code before can follow it coherently in order to gain an understanding of what it is doing. This goes both ways, of course this helps colleagues to understand your work (wish I had automatic standard formatting for my handwriting), it also helps you as a fledgling programmer to ease into a new language. If you can pick up on the rules of a language it is much easier to decipher code that is using functions or methods that you have never seen before. Just like in real life, when you can grasp the abstract rules, putting your own thoughts into a language comes much easier.