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I wish short code was also fast code. Why is it almost never that way?
I'm lazy.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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You said it 
It's all too easy too write reams of code that is almost unmaintainable, in the end readability is more important than performance I think, that way less bugs will be introduced.
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I totally agree.
I forget who, but someone said that design patterns are just a reflection of the limitations of a language.
In other words, patterns should be able to be replaced by keywords, basically, that do the patterns.
In general, I think this speaks to the broader point we were on.
Let the language do the heavy lifting. I just wish it did more sometimes.
I don't often admit this in polite company, but I'm a fan of pure visual languages like FlowStone.
They I think, do a really good job of encapsulating a lot of patterns.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I have heard about the Ballerina visual language, but never tried it: Ballerina.io[^]
Maybe when I'm retired and have the time for it 
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I have my own style and coding guidlines, but the determining factor of what I do at work is based on
a) Does the company have coding/style guidelines?
b) If a is false, I use the style/coding practices of the file I'm editing, and
c) try to use the same coding/style as other files in the project in new files i create.
Other than that, I try to only have one return point in a method, I declare and ini5t vars at the top of methods or scoped control blocks, try never to use "var" as a variable's type. keep methods within the scope that the method name infers, and I put class components in the order fields, properties, constructors, destructors, and then methods. Ialso put intellisense comments on every method and property. I'm also not shy at all about writinmg copious comments.
There are other things, but you get the idea.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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lol i use var as much as possible. in fact, i had to build the habit.
if C# had proper typedefs (using doesn't count) then I probably wouldn't, but i use generics a lot
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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codewitch honey crisis wrote: if(0==foo)
That's the most uselessest concept ever conceived.
codewitch honey crisis wrote: MS naming and style guidelines
I don't follow guidelines from companies I don't work for.
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It was only useless with the advent of more sophisticated compilers.
I started coding in 1986 - old habits.
And for the record, I *did* work for microsoft.
But more, when you're writing company code that's fine.
When you're writing APIs to expose outside of your company you should probably adopt standards for your public interfaces that are widely understood.
Anyone writing in .NET is going to be familiar with the style of the 6500+ base classes used in the .NET framework, so it's as good a standard as any for public facing APIs, and better than most
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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That seems like a childish response, tbh
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Seriously though, when you get older you live and let live. Truths become less absolute.
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I agree with that. In most aspects of my life I am very buddhist.
In most of my coding I am. Public facing APIs are a hill I'll die on though.
And by public facing, I meant interfaces that are intended to be consumed by a wider audience than one's company/team
Standards here are sooo important, for reasons I could practically write a book on.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Well, do you think any API became unusable because of the style of its interface?
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I think what happens is people get less inclined to use it as the learning curve grows.
Especially with the rate people are expected to learn technologies.
The more one-off your style is, the more difficult to adapt to it.
Furthermore, when integrating many components it makes the glue code clunky if the APIs don't even remotely match up to each other in terms of how they're named and how you navigate them.
Pretty soon everything is spaghetti. Glue has always been glue code, and somewhat messy, but how messy largely depends on how standardized everything is in terms of how it's programmed against.
It's hard to put a point on specifically, if only because so many APIs with a one-off style suffer from other problems (libutp is a good example) but problematic APIs lead to less adopters.
So if you want wider adoption and higher quality code it's a good idea to keep your public APIs playing nice and consistently with as much else as you can.
This means in .NET for example, at least familiarizing oneself with microsoft style and standard guidelines.
Why? because the 6500+ base classes in .NET are coded out that way, and people already know how to use them. So make your API similar and the learning curve is less steep - seems obvious to me but then i've been coding for a long time too - not quite 40 years like i guess some people here
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I am an old programmer. started in 1978.
ASM all the way till 2010. yep old school.
In 2016 I picked up a gig with a company I left in 1992.
Tracking equipment.
All C based.
No problem.
NXP processor. Not bad.
MQX RTOS. Bloody night mare. (not an RTOS by the way)
Had to drill down and re-write the drivers and part of the OS.
The young buck in charge! did not like my style of programming.
I did not like his. (macro use every where)
Who cares if your style is not liked by someone else.
does the end result work? Can someone else follow the code you have produced?
If so then job done.
Am fed up with programmers trying to copy someone else's style and spending months making it look pretty instead of making a product work using their own style. (if possible)
STOP copying and pasting. Without understanding that which you are copying.
Anyway. The message is. Develop your own style and progress with that.
Ken.
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That seems sensible, with a heavy caveat.
Public APIs with a general/public development audience (meaning beyond your company/team)
Like if you're making libraries or components.
At that point, I think it's important to adopt as widely available/common denominator standard as possible for the public facing APIs at least.
This makes everyone's lives easier, except maybe yours (or mine) due to the research and learning curve, but in the end it saves user headache and in some cases can cut some of the tech documentation down a bit because you don't have to re-explain basic concepts, like say, a dictionary object. If you're using those to enumerate keyed items you don't need to document an "IndexedCollection" class or whatever.
So in general i agree, but again public facing APIs are my sticking point. I'll die on that hill.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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The point I was trying to make is.
Do not loose heart if someone does not like your style.
Everyone has their own style.
So long as others can follow your code, does it matter.
As a programmer (if you view it as I) you will try to make it as efficient as possible. (think and re-write, think and re-write)
Keep a problem area in the back of your mind, it may be working, but you know there is a possible problem there.
Do not! copy someone else's style. (this is for the new comers)
Make mistakes.
Admit it and fix them.
A programming style cannot be learnt from a book.
I love using multi dimensional arrays. They are efficient, but the code is really hard to follow.
Therefore, I have to write a document explaining exactly how the code works.
Rambling, I know.
Ken.
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> I love using multi dimensional arrays. They are efficient, but the code is really hard to follow.
In .NET they're inefficient. Nested arrays are more efficient. Weird, I know.
But in .NET I end up creating really ugly structures for a similar reason as you using MD arrays (like in C or C++)
Here's a recent datatype I had to munge through. Yes, I use comments for this
Tuple<TAccept, Tuple<KeyValuePair<char, char>[], int>[]>[]
Fortunately, it's opaque to the end consumer. It's basically a "handle"
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I do would not like to come across that in a piece of code.
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me either.
but it was either that or require a dependency in the generated output that i didn't need (it's part of a code generator)
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I used to have OCD some years ago and I overcame it by noticing that I have it, noticing what particular actions I'm doing due to OCD and realizing that those actions are nonsense that cost time, don't even bring enjoyment and that's about it.
The rest was a tad of willpower and utilitarism.
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Intellectually I understand that. In most areas of my life I can even apply it.
Here I'm battling 30 years of NOT doing that (being mindful and letting go) where it comes to coding.
Maybe I'm lacking in the willpower department. I usually find ways to hack around my lack of willpower. 
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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How much of a hardliner utilitarist are you? I very much am and that helps a huge lot in overcoming nonsensical habits.
I wouldn't even say that I'm big in the willpower department, but my utilitarism is a suitable substitute.
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well i am an instrumentalist "what's real is what's useful"
and by real, i mean what exists in any meaningful sense
i am pretty much a hardliner about it maybe, if you'd consider that hardline.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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If you are reviewing code, use your smart editor to format it the way you want so you can understand it.
If you need to make a change after review, revert the file, make your change, test, move on.
And follow this rule:
Rule #1 for source control sanity retention:
Never combine a reformat with an actual code change in the same commit!
Use a separate commit with a "//reformat" comment as the first line for formatting, then remove the comment and do the real change.
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