[Asterisk-Dev] [Rant] [long] - code style and quality

[Derek Smithies]

On Sat, 7 May 2005, Steve Underwood wrote:
> Whine about a real problem - the bug tracker has become useless. I find 
> the original post truly obnoxious. It is postings like that which often 
> want to make me give up writing free software. I don't know the guy's 
> background, be he writes like someone who is somewhere in the middle of 
> the C 101 course, and wants to tell the world what he found. People who 
> have actually produced something complex and useful seldom write that 
> way. They know real code gets messy as time goes on. Cleaning it up is 
> not only time consuming, it risks breaking proven code in subtle ways. I 
> often go through major cleanups in my own code, and accept the suffering 
> it causes re-debugging things that used to work. That is me causing me 
> problems. That's my right. People have no right to even suggest others 
> should tolerate similar suffering.


> They know real code gets messy as time goes on. Cleaning it up is 
> not only time consuming, it risks breaking proven code in subtle ways. 
Rubbish.
  This statement is an excuse for messy code.
  Many open source projects have guidelines on codestyle. Many have very 
  clean, tidy easy to read code. 

The correct statement is: 
 code (of any type) can be messy - it depends on the developers motivation.


Maybe, this whole thread can be summed up in one sentence:
 Does * need to adopt a coding style policy?


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> I don't know the guy's background, be he writes like someone who is
> somewhere in the middle of the C 101 course, and wants to tell the world
> what he found.
Two things.
 *Why did you not put the guys name into google, and see how many hits you 
  found? Then, read some of the hits and determine his background.

 *Are you planning on publically apologising?
  http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/2004-March/003353.html
  I love the attitude of this list.. FFS

Derek.
-- 
Derek Smithies Ph.D.                         
IndraNet Technologies Ltd.                
Email: derek at indranet.co.nz         
ph +64 3 365 6485                          
Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/