| There is a document called the "VAX-11 Software Engineering Manual" which
contains chapters on formatting assembly language, BASIC, BLISS, COBOL and
FORTRAN. I expect it could be updated to include PASCAL if anybody were
interested. To quote from the preface:
"Over the years, much ado has been made about coding standards and
conventions. Everyone believed that conventions are good, so long as they
are not the other guy's conventions! COmmittees were formed, and reformed,
and left to die for lack of consensus. We repeatedly refused to follow
conventions that we deemed "imperfect" and consequently we followed none at
all.
"A great deal of this has been foolish nit-picking on the part of our vast
multitude of entrepreneurs. The time has come to stop the foolishness and
to recognize the reasons for which code uniformity is mandated."
..."All that we ask of you is to convince yourself that these conventions
are no less reasonable than any other set of conventions. Then, we hope,
you will be willing to show sufficient professional maturity to adopt and
follow these conventions."
The copy I have is dated February 19, 1977, and is marked revision 3. I
have never heard of a later revision. On the first inside page it says
DO NOT DUPLICATE
For additional copies, contact:
Ike Nassi
ML 21-4/E20
Ike Nassi left the company some time ago, so I don't know where you can get
a copy. The chapters on BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN are empty.
John Sauter
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| I think a good way for a group to handle the problem of coding conventions
is to have an example 'style' program. If a particular style consideration
isn't exemplified by the style program, it's probably fairly unimportant.
Note that where there is disagreement on 'style', the programs should be
re-written from scratch (rather than simply taking those from some previous
project). Anybody complaining about style automatically gets the job of
updating the style program.
Also, the style programs provide a convenient example of a short program
in the particular language.
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