I've noticed recently that my code, in whatever language, is written such that a relatively inexperienced programmer can pick it up and have some idea of what's going on. I tend towards Readability in my code, probably because of my own experiences. In fact, if I ever start writing songs again, the first one will be a blues called "Other People's Software".

In my first 'real' job, I was working at a well-known American space agency which shall go nameless. I was handed some C code which had been written by someone long gone and which was untouched for months. There were no comments. All variables were 'a', 'b', 'c', and so on. All functions, subroutines, macros, etc, were 'a', 'b', 'c', and so on. All I knew about the code was:

1) It converted files from one data format to another.
2) There was no documentation available other than the code.
3) There was a problem under VMS (though not any of the Unices) when the file was over, say, 15MB.
4) There was no "#ifdef" anywhere in the code.

Given that experience, I tend to make my code obvious, unless I need to adjust for performance purposes. If someone else can't support it, I'll never get rid of it.

--
tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub)
And remember, if he succeeds, so what.
- Chick McGee

In reply to Re: A question of style - declaring lexicals by tbone1
in thread A question of style - declaring lexicals by saskaqueer

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