[seek-dev] Re: [kepler-dev] Query Builder Code Review

Rod Spears rods at ku.edu
Mon Aug 16 06:48:04 PDT 2004


Edward,

I was merely trying to have discussion about the Kepler style guide. I 
think your previous remarks were very divisive and inappropriate.

Rod


Edward A Lee wrote:

>
> Well, it seems very unlikely we'll ever agree here...
> But I'm not giving up yet...
>
> Nobody is arguing for "every single file, module and/or
> line of code looking exactly the same."  This is a polarizing
> statement...
>
> I'm arguing that the relatively _unimportant_ properties be dealt
> with consistently.
>
> Unfortunately, many programmers feel that where the curly braces
> go is actually extremely important, and they love to argue about
> it...  Too bad the same level of energy doesn't go into the important
> things...
>
> Since coding style is really about the unimportant details,
> it really has nothing to do with the "great commercial
> software dilemma."  Whether software sells has little to do with
> coding style...  I do believe that consistent coding style
> promotes better software, but it's not because the coding
> style makes the software look better.  It's because other
> programmers on the team can more easily understand your code.
>
> Unfortunately, programmers who are so dogmatic about
> unimportant issues are also likely to be dogmatic about important
> ones, leading to "Frankenware," where everyone's contribution
> has a different approach to concurrency, UI design, etc.
> But that is a separate issue... On any collaborative project,
> there are always people contributing who you wish were not
> contributing...
>
> As for the idea that software is publication, I agree it's a radical
> idea, and it will require a cultural change to take hold.  Cultural
> changes are hard because there is a lot of dogma out there.
> But I firmly believe that a good piece of software should be given
> as much credibility for, say, tenure and promotion, as a good
> series of papers...  At Berkeley it is, but I think this is relatively
> rare... But culturally, we have a long way to go...
>
> As for "being as productive as possible," a real risk that Kepler
> faces is an explosion of actors.  It is _not_ more likely to be used
> if there are 10,000 actors in the library.  In fact, it's less likely
> to be used. Having less than 100 well-designed actors with orthogonal
> functionality, a coherent design (parameter names, port names, icon
> designs, concurrency styles, granularity, ...) is what will make
> it likely to be used.  This cannot happen if people aren't reading
> each other's code.  Dogmatically refusing to follow a coding
> style will discourage people from reading your code.
>
> More is not better...
>
> Edward
>
>
> At 10:10 AM 8/13/2004 -0500, Rod Spears wrote:
>
>> Sorry, I completely disagree. Writing software is certainly not the 
>> same as publishing academic papers, and I think it is a fascinating 
>> thought that Open Source could/should be considered a published work 
>> (sounds like a discussion for another day).
>>
>> The reality of Open Source software is that if you put a lot of rules 
>> in place you begin to limit the contributions, and that can be both 
>> good and bad. There is certainly a desired level of quality and 
>> certainly rules enforce that etc. etc. It was always a very difficult 
>> line to walk; that is, to encourage contributions and then figure out 
>> "how" to accept good work that may not fit exactly into the place it 
>> needs to fit.
>>
>> For example on Mozilla, the lack of every single file, module and/or 
>> line of code looking exactly the same was never a problem for anyone 
>> contributing to the project (I can't say it hurt productivity or the 
>> quality of the code).
>>
>> This discussion and it is one I have had over and over, reminds me of 
>> the great commercial software dilemma: Would a software engineer 
>> rather write:
>> 1) A perfectly engineered piece of software with no bugs, that 
>> doesn't sell a dime.
>> 2) A rather odd piece of software with some questionable design and 
>> architectural decisions that sells millions of copies.
>>
>> Certainly when writing commercial code, productivity ranks up there 
>> with quality and all the other important aspects of creating great 
>> software. I have seen this over and over again at the start of every 
>> project. The engineers wrangle over coding style for weeks, nobody 
>> can agree but with the higher levels of a style guide and in the end 
>> everyone gets worn down and tired of the discussion. And then 
>> everyone writes their code adhering to those general guidelines. I 
>> have yet to work on a commercial project where the style guide for 
>> coding was dictated to the engineers.
>>
>> But Kepler (with contributions from SEEK) is not a commercial 
>> project. So I guess I am at a loss to what its true priorities should 
>> be. My priorities from the beginning have always been to create 
>> something that people will actually use. To reach that goal I want to 
>> be as productive as possible.
>>
>> In my personal opinion the Ptolemy style guide is quite unique and so 
>> completely different than any other style guide I have used, that I 
>> find it cramping my style (pun intended). So I did what I did for the 
>> sake of getting my work done in a timely manner. (I could argue that 
>> because I used a style guide that is more comfortable to myself, the 
>> quality of my code is higher than if I struggled to "think" about my 
>> code as others "think" about their code)
>>
>> I stand by what I said earlier about a general style guide with 
>> module ownership and adapting to the style of the owner. It just 
>> seems odd that I need to adapt to Ptolemy's style guide (which is 
>> basically what Kepler's style guide is) and I doubt I will ever 
>> change a line of Ptolemy code. Of course if I did, I would be more 
>> than happy to adhere to its style completely.
>>
>> Rod
>>
>>
>> Edward A Lee wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I would not take lightly making exceptions to the coding style...
>>> Do it once, and everyone will feel free to do it, and you will not
>>> have a coding style anymore...
>>>
>>> If you are publishing an academic paper, the editors of the journal
>>> or conference proceedings get to decide on formatting issues. You
>>> may have strong preferences about font, layout, reference styles,
>>> header styles, etc., but you are not given a choice.  Should that
>>> be changed?  I don't think so...
>>>
>>> Open source software should be viewed as form of publication.
>>> The same principle should apply.
>>>
>>> Edward
>>>
>>> At 01:29 PM 8/12/2004 -0500, Rod Spears wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree that we should have a more "formal" meeting about our 
>>>> Kepler coding standards. And I agree that one style does not fit all.
>>>>
>>>> But I still think we need to have some way to distinguish the scope 
>>>> of a variable from its prefix. If folks don't like what I have 
>>>> proposed then pick something, but it can be rather confusing 
>>>> without a prefix (as I have found when reading some of the current 
>>>> code).
>>>>
>>>> As a suggestion consider this:
>>>> On Mozilla we had a general set of guidelines, which most us 
>>>> followed, but not everyone unfortunately. Of coarse, we could never 
>>>> agree on the curly brace issue, but we did a fairly good job on 
>>>> deciding on file names, interface file names, method argues, class 
>>>> data member names, and global names.
>>>>
>>>> The other overriding rule (especially because we had the notion of 
>>>> module ownership), was that you were to always make attempt to 
>>>> follow the coding standard of the files(s) you were working in.
>>>>
>>>> Meaning those who spent a lot of time in their modules had a little 
>>>> more flexibility in the style for those files, thus making it 
>>>> easier and more natural for those developers. Then, if by chance, 
>>>> you found yourself making changes to other people's code, you 
>>>> adapted to their style. The obvious idea was that you probably 
>>>> weren't going to be doing a lot of editting in other peoples code. 
>>>> Which, as it turns out, was pretty much true.
>>>>
>>>> I don't expect to be editting much if any Ptolemy code, etc. And it 
>>>> wouldn't make a lot of sense for someone to spend much time in the 
>>>> QB trying to fix a bug when I should probably be the fixing it.
>>>>
>>>> I think there is an economies of scale thing in here somewhere ;-)
>>>>
>>>> (Besides, outside of variable naming conventions, a lot of code can 
>>>> be reformatted with Eclipse or other tools)
>>>>
>>>> Rod
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Edward A Lee wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> At 11:17 AM 8/12/2004 -0500, Rod Spears wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, there seems to be some varying feelings and opinions about 
>>>>>> the coding style for Kepler. My approach which I am sure differs 
>>>>>> from Kepler is as follows:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) All method arguments start with a lowercase "a"
>>>>>> 2) All class data members all start with "m" (unless they are final)
>>>>>> 3) All local variables have no prefix.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is my belief that you should always be able to look at a 
>>>>>> variable in the code and understand it's scope. I disagree with 
>>>>>> the approach where both the method arguments and the local 
>>>>>> variables have no prefix and are often distinguished by a 
>>>>>> "this.", which is rather verbose at times.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> While I think these are valid points,
>>>>> I would like to make a case for following the coding style anyway...
>>>>>
>>>>> There is no coding style that will appeal to everyone (I guarantee 
>>>>> it).
>>>>> The benefits of having a uniform coding style, however, far outweigh
>>>>> _any_ benefits you might derive from any particular coding style.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, I would suggest that the discussion needs to be:
>>>>>
>>>>>  1) What changes should be made to the uniform coding style?
>>>>>  2) Who's going to do the work to convert the existing code base
>>>>>     to conform with any changes in the coding style?
>>>>>
>>>>> Number 2 suggests that changes had better have pretty compelling
>>>>> reasons... I don't find the above reasons compelling enough...
>>>>> (nor are they consistent: What if I name a local variable "model"?
>>>>> Is it a class data member?).
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the concerns addressed by this proposal are adequately
>>>>> addressed by keeping methods short and by choosing readable
>>>>> names for variables that a compositions of full words and clearly
>>>>> define the role of the variable.
>>>>>
>>>>> Edward
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------
>>>>> Edward A. Lee, Professor
>>>>> 518 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
>>>>> phone: 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2739
>>>>> <mailto:eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU>eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, 
>>>>> <http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal>http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal 
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Rod Spears
>>>> Biodiversity Research Center
>>>> University of Kansas
>>>> 1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
>>>> Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
>>>> Tel: 785 864-4082, Fax: 785 864-5335
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------
>>> Edward A. Lee, Professor
>>> 518 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
>>> phone: 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2739
>>> <mailto:eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU>eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, 
>>> http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Rod Spears
>> Biodiversity Research Center
>> University of Kansas
>> 1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
>> Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
>> Tel: 785 864-4082, Fax: 785 864-5335
>
>
> ------------
> Edward A. Lee, Professor
> 518 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
> phone: 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2739
> eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal
>
> _______________________________________________
> seek-dev mailing list
> seek-dev at ecoinformatics.org
> http://www.ecoinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/seek-dev



-- 
Rod Spears
Biodiversity Research Center
University of Kansas
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
Tel: 785 864-4082, Fax: 785 864-5335

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