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There's a deeper problem here, though. If you're asking, "So, that's what you think your code will do... what does the standard say?" the problem isn't really t
by kerkeslager 13y ago
There's a deeper problem here, though. If you're asking, "So, that's what you think your code will do... what does the standard say?" the problem isn't really that they don't know the standard, it's that they've written the code in a way where it's ambiguous what it does.
If I see
static int i;
in code, I'm going to change it to
static int i = 0;
even if I know that static integers are initialized to 0 in the standard, because I know that eventually someone will have to maintain the code who doesn't know that. I don't particularly care what the standard says there: the code shouldn't assume detailed understanding of the standard, which isn't realistically a valid assumption.
- devcjohnson 13y agoMe too reply... Don't get cute and always prefer to explicitly state in code what you get for free implicitly. The maintenance guy that follows behind you will be the one to espouse how clever you actually are. That's how I mentor junior engineers as a general rule.
- daenz 13y agoYou nailed it. Standards are nice and all, when they're perfectly unambiguous, and when everyone follows them exactly. That is not the real world. Writing code clearly and explicitly has far more reward for the effort put into it than learning all the standards pedantically.