On Saturday 17 June 2006 14:35, John Adams wrote:
> Here's a question: To what extent is a module submitted to CPAN written
for
> "the team" in the sense of "the Perl community"? What about a module
> included in the standard distribution?
Is it your job to maintain them?
I expect a decent programmer to be able to read code. I also expect CPAN
modules and especially core modules to contain fairly decent code. I
expect
said decent developer to be able to patch bugs or add features in either
module in a reasonable amount of time, depending on the quality of the
code.
However, there's a world of difference between eventually being able to
read
and patch code and deeply grokking code written in your team's
embarrassingly, exceedingly familiar style. That's why your team has a
coherent, cohesive, communal style.
I don't know of a single programming language which mandates the im****tant
elements of style (no, neither brace placement nor indentation) yet still
allows people to write useful, maintainable code. At some level,
developers
have to exercise their own judgment about identifiers, flow control,
design
decomposition, idioms and disidioms, and other elements of
maintainability.
If your developers can't seem to create mutually maintainable code as a
team,
you have a monkey problem, not a choice of language problem. No language
can
solve it. Some languages can alleviate it somewhat over other languages,
but
the real problem is that you hired monkeys, not disciplined programmers
capable of working in a team.
It seems to me the solution is not to hire monkeys, at least if you care
about
building decent software.
-- c
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