What’s Your Worst Experience with a Coding Standard?
I remember the first time I encountered GhostDoc.? It was an oasis in a professional desert of soul-sucking conformity.
Okay, wait. Let me back up and explain.
I was working in a custom app dev shop at the time.? While working there, I worked on an assortment of apps, big and small, and I delivered to an assortment?of clients, big and small.? Some had their own internal maintenance devs, and some did not.? And yet, in spite of this disjoint, hodgepodge arrangement, the company maintained a single?and relatively?involved coding standard for dozens of folks on dozens of projects.
The “Professional” Coding Standard
Most aspects of the standard were unremarkable and understandable.? So, on the whole, this didn’t bother me.? But there was an edict floating around in there that said every method and class, no matter what, needed XML doc comments.
This applied to code being maintained by client developers and to code that nobody would ever look at again.? It applied to both API deliverables and to GUI crud apps that nobody would touch again.? Why comment everything in this fashion, no matter what?? Because it makes us “look professional,” that’s why.
Ugh.
And so I found myself laboriously going back and brainlessly adding comments to dozens of files.? You see, I hadn’t known about this standard when I started, so I didn’t bother commenting this forms-over-data thing for which we weren’t even delivering source code.? So I had a lot of “work” to do.
Initially, I contemplated writing my own commenting engine.? I honestly think I could have done that in less time than it would take to hand comment.? But then I figured something like this had to exist already, and my search led me quickly to GhostDoc.
Once I discovered that, I sprayed my code with comments like an exterminator taking care of an ant problem.? Then I called it a day.
As I’ve discussed previously, this is NOT how I’d use GhostDoc today or how I’d approach commenting in general.? But it got the “job” done, and the powers that be considered “my” comments completely acceptable.? Project finished.