in reply to Paid for crap

A co-worker had issues with a PHB. The PHB in question was our customer, who was... well, let's just say "very specific" in his coding style.

For example (just one example of many), my co-worker was told to change

// variables not representative of actual names
int alpha, beta, kumquat;

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into

int alpha;
int beta;
int kumquat;

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My co-worker was not happy with the change, but had no position to veto the PHB's changes. -sigh- Moral of the story, it may not be the fault of the programmer, they may hate the code just as much as you do.

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Re^2: Paid for crap
by pemungkah (Priest) on Jan 25, 2007 at 19:37 UTC 
    char* a, b;

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    doesn't do what 
    char* a;
char* b;

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    does (the first one declares one pointer to char, and one char). (Pause for stares of disbelief from non-C programmers.)

    This is a shortcoming in C which the supervisor in question is trying to avoid. Explaining the reason in the coding standards document would be a nice idea. Assuming there actually is such a document, that is.

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      The data types were really just integers. The supervisor was just trying to find something wrong with the code, when there really wasn't anything.

      He had a similar change made to a comment. It was broken up into two lines, he wanted only one long line. Brought defects up in reviews of spreadsheets because columns were too wide, too narrow, et cetera et cetera.

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        The supervisor was just trying to find something wrong with the code,

        I've seen this before as well. It seems to happen when less-competent folks get some power and then turn into little tyrants. Actually, outside of programming, you see it all the time with inspectors of all kinds that work in various levels of government.

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      Sanctified C programmers, guided by the holy writ (K&R), would never fall into that trap nor lead anyone else into peril. That's because they'd write the above as 
      char *a, *b;

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      Whitespace++.
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Re^2: Paid for crap
by syphilis (Archbishop) on Jan 25, 2007 at 17:24 UTC
    Moral of the story, it may not be the fault of the programmer

    I beg to differ:

    Moral of the story, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing

    :-)

    Cheers,
    Rob
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Re^2: Paid for crap
by MaxKlokan (Monk) on Jan 28, 2007 at 19:55 UTC
    Frankly, the PHB's request doesn't seem unreasonable to me. If he thinks the code is more readable his way, then he should have it his way, since he is paying for it.
    If you bought a red car and the dealer delivered a blue car, would you be happy? Sure they both drive equally well, but if you like it red, why should you have it blue?
    The OP's example, on the other hand, is something different, for it raises doubts on the Perl skills of the vendor.
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