Comments on: Doolwind's Game Coding Standard

By: Mcdrewski

Mcdrewski — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:19:06 +0000

Literally, LOL.

By: Rina

Rina — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:37:29 +0000

Modern IDE’s have auto reformatting options so that no matter how ugly you write your code it can automatically be cleaned up to the defined standard.

By: Dice

Dice — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:48:39 +0000

I love it. I’ve been coding C++ for a little more then a year now, at this lovely university in the Netherlands in Breda, and haven’t really picked a standard yet myself, because I’m usually working with others that have picked one out for me (I’m pretty flexible in that way at this point). I’m trying to become a game developer and going to work on my own (basic) game engine this week for future (school) projects, so this can really come in handy.

By: sqrt[-1]

sqrt[-1] — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:37:48 +0000

I agree with James that 6 & 8 are a waste of time in a standard. As long as everything is named correctly, an auto-formatter can take care of spaces (and even braces if need be).

We recently had a huge discussion thread at work where people were arguing over point 6. (I fall in the “I don’t care – the code looks the same either way” camp. My brain has a limited register set and don’t want to waste registers by keeping little rules like this in working memory.)

By: Doolwind

Doolwind — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:18:20 +0000

Cliff-
“Point 5 you kinda contradict yourself. First of all you say “Mousing over is slower than perusing code” as though speed is an issue when discovering information, yet in the next negative/positive you say “readability is more important than saving a few seconds typing”. So which is more important, speed or readability?”

Readability is more important in both cases. In point 5 I believe prefixes make for both more readable and therefore it’s faster to read it .

The main reason for the mouse over comment was that a number of people have used that as a counter to Hungarian notation (which they are correct about) and to prefixing members and arguments (which I believe they are incorrect about).

By: Doolwind

Doolwind — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:58:33 +0000

cowlibob-

Great point about using 3rd party code. I would make a judgment call based on the surface area between your code and the engine. If you are simply making calls to an API or similar then I’d keep my own standard however if the code is quite a mix (as I believe is the case with Unreal) then it’d be best to look at adopting their standard to keep things consistent.

By: cowlibob

cowlibob — Sun, 04 May 2008 11:52:14 +0000

what i find annoying is when you are working with a large 3rd party code base such as unreal or something that has terrible (in my opinion) coding standard and you are kind of obligated to follow at least some of their standards. I’m not sure, what do other people do in with this?

For the record I use the same standards as Doolwind, except no a_ for function arguments. I personally find that a bit too anal for me.

Also I think where comments are place is important too, but that’s another kettle of fish.

By: James

James — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:04:34 +0000

Most of these are good points, though 6 & 8 are getting into the ‘just shutup and let me code’ category. I have my personal preference for these, as does everyone, and generally these preferences all differ.
I honestly don’t think these affect the speed with which a programmer reads code. For the record, I disagree with 6 but agree with 8.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:25:21 +0000

The problem with coding standards is that we learn them too late. By the time kids get to university or the workplace, most have made their own coding standard that is terrible. And with the prolification of terribly-formatted code snippets across the internet, it’s hard to know where to turn for good help. And suddenly, “I’ll do it my way and you can do it your way – as long as the code works.” And then you have a bad programmer that you have to fire just because they won’t put curly braces in the right spot.

Thank goodness that Doolwind’s Game Coding Journal can help us through these murky waters with a welcome and refreshing clarity.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:15:56 +0000

Ahh coding standards, always a point of contention amongst programmers. ^_^ I largely agree with what you’ve outlined though. Coming from a Java developer background (which tends to adopt curly braces on the same line) and having started using C# in Visual studio (which puts curly braces on a new line), I have to agree that having a new line for brackets is very much more readable. When discussing this with Greg at some point, he explained that it also enhances your ability to bracket match when seeing where a block starts and ends which is very handy I’ve found and speeds up development.

With point 4, regarding always having braces, and in response to the comments already about it, I’d like to say that there seems to be a point missed with always blocking a statement, even with only one line. The problem is that a new developer, or even an old one who is coming back to it, will not always pick up that there is no curly brace, especially if they personally prefer to add them for one line statements. This means they end up coding after the open statement (eg. if (condition) ) on the assumption their code is in a block and won’t realise until compile time (or errors start appearing in the error checker).