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I don't have an example to give, but i can offer this. During the prototype phase, anything goes, speed is paramount, you just have to make it sort of work. Do

I don't have an example to give, but i can offer this. During the prototype phase, anything goes, speed is paramount, you just have to make it sort of work. Don't get hung up practicing pretty looking code during this phase. You should always practice, but don't get hung up. Prototype given the green light? Ready to dive into the build phase? I'll say this, google for "coding style guide"

jowiar 10y ago
The challenge with style guides as an approach to "nice code" is they often focus on the code equivalent of writing a grammatically correct line of code -- things that can be often caught with a linter. Where I see things fail a lot more is in the code equivalent of "How do I structure a paragraph" or "How do I organize this paper", which most things under the "style guide" umbrella don't cover.
- sidlls 10y ago
  I've always thought of the "how to write grammatically correct code" style guides as being relevant to writing high quality code in the context of a team that may onboard a new person or an internal transfer: they provide some baseline guarantee (insofar as the team honors them, of course) of the structure and formatting of the code. This reduces some amount of friction in a team. The benefits provided are largely context dependent (e.g. they'll benefit teams that expect to have a couple of senior engineers and many juniors on a relatively constant basis more than a team of experienced engineers in general), but I think having a style guide is important for any "large enough" engineering organization. I've also always insisted on including at least some loose guides to cover the "how do I structure a paragraph" cases. These generally are going to vary on a project by project basis, though, so they're going to be more vague as a rule.
herbst 10y ago
Especially with Rails as rapid prototyping language this is kind of a bad advice IMO. Usually the prototype already will be the base of your application and we both know you will never get rid of all the dept you could build that way
- albeebe1 10y ago
  My use of prototype was probably a poor choice. Not sure what is better replacement.
  - herbst 10y ago
    I see where you are coming from but this just does not fit the way a typical rails coder operates.

jowiar 10y ago

The challenge with style guides as an approach to "nice code" is they often focus on the code equivalent of writing a grammatically correct line of code -- things that can be often caught with a linter. Where I see things fail a lot more is in the code equivalent of "How do I structure a paragraph" or "How do I organize this paper", which most things under the "style guide" umbrella don't cover.

sidlls 10y ago
I've always thought of the "how to write grammatically correct code" style guides as being relevant to writing high quality code in the context of a team that may onboard a new person or an internal transfer: they provide some baseline guarantee (insofar as the team honors them, of course) of the structure and formatting of the code. This reduces some amount of friction in a team. The benefits provided are largely context dependent (e.g. they'll benefit teams that expect to have a couple of senior engineers and many juniors on a relatively constant basis more than a team of experienced engineers in general), but I think having a style guide is important for any "large enough" engineering organization. I've also always insisted on including at least some loose guides to cover the "how do I structure a paragraph" cases. These generally are going to vary on a project by project basis, though, so they're going to be more vague as a rule.

herbst 10y ago

Especially with Rails as rapid prototyping language this is kind of a bad advice IMO. Usually the prototype already will be the base of your application and we both know you will never get rid of all the dept you could build that way

albeebe1 10y ago
My use of prototype was probably a poor choice. Not sure what is better replacement.
- herbst 10y ago
  I see where you are coming from but this just does not fit the way a typical rails coder operates.