Simple question, complex answer.

Summary: While they do highlight potential issues in code - like "hidden" side effects - some of the guidelines are just plain pedantic for the sake of being pedantic - like ++i vs i++. Some even force extra complexity, like not allowing break or continue (what Perl calls last and next) in loops. And some are just annoying.

While I agree the guidelines represent things we should be careful with, what really bugs me about the guidelines is not the guidelines themselves but that certain people take them as a license to assume we don't know what we are doing and so bludgeon us with the "rules". Yes, we are human and do make mistakes. But, as helpful as reasoned use of the guidelines can be, they don't prevent mistakes. Indeed, a program that is 100% compliant with the guidelines is almost always more complex, so is likely to "hide" more bugs then a reasonably written program where the programmer made no consideration of the guidelines.

In reply to Re^14: quickness is not so obvious by RonW
in thread quickness is not so obvious by DanBev

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