Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:48:48 -0500 Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:48:36 -0700 From: Patricia Shanahan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120713 Thunderbird/14.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.help Subject: Re: Why so many imports instead of java.io.* ? References: <502a4326$0$295$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <4772cee5-44de-4064-ac8c-389ce431b0ce@googlegroups.com> <502cf830$0$282$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <502e3452$0$294$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <27ce6e0f-d983-4398-a209-442f677a58ec@googlegroups.com> <39f3de86-1e41-40eb-899b-03d85c4d3920@googlegroups.com> <07at28h5ocrl14vlgd06cesi4hne7gqkj2@4ax.com> <50326127$0$292$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <50337928$0$290$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> In-Reply-To: <50337928$0$290$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 35 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.230.200.172 X-Trace: sv3-gMbusnNB3EdW6RZyDivSQq5ZY/yXNMxPWvPiwDw5rr6GRCBtxHb66vBKaxAhApGYCFvTwWw8PMRUaQx!radEGtyr1rV1Hjm83XArX93+HTJoDIKz7TXRS7wyswUXRhcFJOMXh877r/UBj6K2tpB0ONOepOlx!FPgHbRKYrIMYDcBvKdX+5AXBvv71EwXTqkscMMhHtHKY9wM= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3408 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.help:2048 On 8/21/2012 5:03 AM, Timothy Madden wrote: > On 08/20/2012 07:40 PM, Patricia Shanahan wrote: >> On 8/20/2012 9:09 AM, Timothy Madden wrote: >> ... >>> I don't appreciate coding conventions either. For once, they are >>> mischievously named "conventions", "style" or "guidelines", but if you >>> don't follow them, you can't work in project ... which makes them hard >>> rules, not conventions. >> >> I do think a project should have rules, not conventions. I don't care >> much what they are, as long as visible indent reflects logical nesting. > > Some programmers already have a style that they feel comfortable working > with, that they are used with. For them the "project should have rules, > though I don't care what they are" attitude is not good enough. A > different style is too annoying and distracts you from your work, and > chances to get a project that enforces exactly your style are slim. > > This is why these "conventions" should be choosen carefully and should > be limited to a minimum of rules like: > "use either spaces or a tab size of 8, an indent of +4, and use > braces on their own line", > and otherwise let the programmers be creative and flexible, instead of > showing them a long document full of rules. In your ideal world, what would happen when Tom needs to change a class that Harry wrote? They disagree about just about everything except indentation. Would the class end up with most identifiers following Harry's preferences, but a couple following Tom's preferences? What if Tom finds Harry's style annoying and distracting? Will Joe, who later needs to study the class, have to cope with two conventions in the same file? Patricia