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Are Programming Conventions still important?



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Are Programming Conventions still important?

The job of a computer programmer is to basically write a set of instructions for a computer to execute. The set of instructions is called a computer program. An important skill of a programmer is to write a program in such a way that the instructions are carried out efficiently by the computer, using as little resources as possible. This often generates a program that only the computer and the programmer who wrote it can understand it, and is totally unreadable to ordinary people. And it is often the case that a few months after writing the program, even the author of the program no longer recognizes it. This can become a nightmare, especially when the program consists of several thousands of lines of code, and a little change has to be introduced to fix a bug, or to implement a new feature. But this can be avoided. Programs can be written in such a way that an ordinary human being can easily read and understand what it is supposed to do. This skill of writing a program both for the computer as well as for ordinary humans is achieved by following certain programming conventions, or guidelines on how a program should be written. These guidelines include such details as naming conventions, indentations, the placement of opening and closing braces, and even putting in comments to explain what each module in the program is supposed to do. A good programmer follows these conventions religiously.

But technology in the field of programming has progressed sufficiently, such that with the use of modern tools, the act of programming is much more visual, and actual writing of code is kept to a minimum. I am now wondering if the use of programming conventions as described above is still considered as good practice. Or is it even relevant, now that programs consist more of design objects, and less of written code. It would be interesting to hear the opinions and experiences of programmers from the old school, as well as from the current generation.

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Corzhens
I used to write short programs for the mainframe. My programming language is COBOL. Our office was very strict when it comes to programming conventions because the idea is for other programmers to handle your program when you are not around. Especialy when there is a bug in the program, any programmer can provide help if the convention is followed. I guess programming now still follow the conventions for ease of debugging and also for revisions in the future.



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mybarya
Oh yes, COBOL on mainframe! Back when programmers don't even need to touch a computer. Those were days...



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galegatling
I would say that the current trend of programming still follow those conventions and for sure, they are always relevant. I studied some programming during my high school era and those conventions were really mandatory. I am not really sure what has really changed now aside from what you said, but I believe there are still programming conventions being used.



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overcast
I think the coding standard and conventions are worth thinking about. Some of the time you can see that many MNC companies make use of that. You can surely see that those are designed for a good reason. You just have to follow them and release your products. And that can be one way to understand that many people are making less mistakes. So that has to be considered there as well.



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Authord
Conventions are really important in programming if you're writing codes that will be maintained in the future, especially naming conventions, It's usually best to choose a consistent set of naming conventions for use throughout your code. Naming conventions usually govern things such as how you capitalize your variables, classes, and functions, whether you include a prefix for pointers, static data, or global data, and how you indicate that something is a private field of a class.



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vhinz
Following programming conventions is still necessary because it helps the whole team to understand part of the codes written by other members. Having programming conventions within the team makes the program easier to modify and fix because the program seems that have been written only by one person. Even one team member leaves, the rest could still work on the program.



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kgord
My nephew is a college senior studying computer engineering and I am sure he is very familiar with all of this. I will have to ask him what he thinks about programming conventions and how he uses them in his programming. We have never discussed it, but he does discuss some of these things with my son who works in coding.



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coolavender
I've been studying a number of programming languages recently and all of them, so far, have been advising students to follow programming conventions for readability and uniformity. In fact, even if you do check out online tutorial sites, you'll find a section devoted to programming conventions. Each language would have its own convention and one may find that a convention in one programming language may be mandatory in others. The use of IDEs and editors make things easier for a programmer, but those that are specific to a language still conforms to the conventions of that language. General purpose editors, on the other hand, still applies common programming conventions.



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augusta
Yes programming conventions are still important even with all the technological advancement, nothing is a waste when it comes to working as a team because one needs to carry the others along.If one is working with a team, this convention is very important, it will aid others to continue with programming with the absence of the initial programmer.So yes it still needed even now.



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kaka135
I still think it is still good to follow the programming conventions, at least it makes others and as you said, even the programmers easier to read the codes in future. There were many times I forgot why I wrote that piece of codes. I am always glad I always wrote down some notes, and it helped me to refresh my memory faster. By following the programming conventions, it didn't take me long to read what I have written too. It's not easy to read someone else's code, so if we can follow the programming conventions, even the codes are lesser now, it still makes everyone's life much easier.



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Corzhens
I think the topic of this discussion is about the new programmers because the young ones tend to break the rules even before learning them. One veteran writer in the movies said that you have to master the rules first before you break it otherwise you will develop a bad style. I have attended a training in programming and it is important to learn the standard conventions because the issue is the probably revisions in the future. If the program was written using the standard then other programmers will not have difficulty in handling it.



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