Funnily enough the quote engine at the top of the page answered this in the way I feel is most important:

"Be consistant"

Recently I have spent quite a bit more time looking at other people's code than writing my own, so I've developed some pretty strong opinions about what makes good style. (I like subroutines to be less than about 40 lines long and I like them to have explicit return values). Nevertheless, the most important thing for me is consistency. Providing the style of code I'm reading holds throughout the whole program, I can adapt. If it changes for every subroutine with no discernable patter, I get s##tty

Ironically, consistency has to be very carefully balanced with actually improving your style :)

In reply to Re: Standards for Writing Subroutines by Boldra
in thread Standards for Writing Subroutines by Jamnet

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