Is there a way to support different coding styles in a development team

The Problem: Two developers => three opinions on indention, braces on new line or not etc.

We usually work with three or four people on our projects and each of those has it’s own code style. I know, the common solution is to agree on a code style, everybody has to use, but I don’t want to force creative programmers in a suit that does not fit them.

So the question is: Is there a way to let each programmer live his/her own style, but having a common code base inside the repository? I think of some git/svn/whatever plugin, which changes between personal and common style on checkout and commit. It appears to me, that the tricky part in this approach is to support correct diffs between the versions of a file

No, you will need to make a standard. If you have team member B change (either with an automated IDE tool, or manually) a whole heap of code team member A wrote, that will be committed and show as a change.

This is something almost every team faces and standards are “forced” for this very reason. I would suggest you follow the language authorities standards as a baseline and adopt them to suit your team.

Having a consistent coding style will also help in the maintainability of the project and reduce the barrier to entry for new people working on the code.

No, you will need to define a coding standard (preferrably one which already exists) and have your developers adhere to it. Being a professional programmer means that you are able to adapt to whatever coding standard is used in the project you’re working on.

YES, it can work as long as the styles are all sensible and people don’t go around changing other peoples’ code to match their preferences and/or mix styles in a single code file.
It’s not ideal, but it’s no different from inheriting old code created to a different “standard” from your own and having to integrate it with your codebase.
So if you have to do it, some guidelines:

no changing differently styled code to match your preferences, it costs time and introduces bugs
remain consistent within any single file. So if style A was used to initially write it, everyone will use style A when modifying it
do create a common standard for your public interface, so for everything that is exposed to the outside (and yes, other subcomponents of a system are the outside).

Automatically reformatting code before it is committed to your version control system is possible in theory.

However, there is one big problem: automatic code formatting tools are not 100% reliable. Thus, you could actually introduce problems in your code with this system. In my mind, that kills the idea. It is always more important to have functional code than properly styled code!

If the project is compartmentalized, and most parts of the code tend to be “owned” by individual programmers, then it may be ok to let them use their own styles (within reason). However, if several people are frequently working on the same piece of code, it is probably necessary to enforce a style.

Here is a similar discussion on Stack Overflow.

The short answer is No.

While opinions are to be valued in work especially in a knowledge based job such as Software Development, developers have to realise that an opinion is just that an opinion and that they are there to write software not argue over which line indentation standard is best.

The goal of a standards document should be to enforce/suggest a set of common coding standards/conventions that addresses

Layout Items such as tabbing, indentation, use of {,( ,
Variable, Object and Function name i.e. CamelCase, Hungarian notation
Exception Handling how/when/where is it to be performed
Code comments. Do you always reference a design doc, a bug number etc

The standards documents helps to ensure that the code is easy to read, maintain and consistent in its conventions.

This is invaluable when reviewing the code before checkins, debuging someone elses code or modifying the code several years after the original developer has left the company.

Normally when creating a Coding Standards document I review the industry standards for the language I am using (C, C#, SQL), use the most appropriate standards, circulate to the most senior/influential developers for comment, incorporate the comments where appropriate and then release the document.

One-way automatically reformatting code may be a workable solution if you :

Find an autoformatter that actually works for the convention you want to implement and your programming language.
Can do it pre-commit so the reformatting doesn’t show up in the change logs mixed with and indistinguishable from the actual functional changes.
Manage to get your team to agree on which convention should be applied (because generally speaking there is no “way back” on check-out to a developer’s personal preference, at least not that I know of).

None of those are actually easy to do in many cases, so consider picking your battles here! I’ve seen teams do this successfully for a C#/.NET project where the reformatting happened already on the developer’s PC, so it is possible in some circumstances.

absolutely you can. Its all about not sweating the small stuff.

The only standard that matters is “keep your changes the same style as the existing code”. As long as you can fit yourself to a coding style that isn’t your preferred one, then you can work with any coding style.

So what’s the big deal about working in 3 different styles within the same company. Your developers need to understand this, that writing code in the way they like is find for their code but once they make changes to a different file that uses a different style, they have to maintain that style (or it’ll really look bad). No reformatting is allowed (or they’ll just reformat continually and the scm diffs will be useless)(and if you do this, then a auto formatted should be employed).

Chances are, once they get going with this, they’ll come to some consensus about which style to use or they style will drift together for the most part. If they’re going to be childish about it and will reformat each others code all the time, then it’ll be time to download a standard from the internet and demand they use it. You might want to do this anyway, just to wave it in their faces as an “play nice or else” card.

Filed under: softwareengineering - @ 17:15

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Is there a way to support different coding styles in a development team