Posted by william on Fri Oct 30 20:51:12 1998
In Reply to: Quora (group bonding) posted by TimP on September 15, 1998 at 13:13:03:
| Distribution: | paneris@i-way.co.uk |
|---|
> A term I would like to introduce is egoless programming,
> a term that was used in the only successful coding team I have been a member of.
> The essense of it is that 'owned code' is bad code.
> Just as the compiler is your friend so is the reviewer.The difficulty here is that code has to be very good before
it is worth other people using it. With your own stuff
you know it, you know where it is likely to fall down,
and it automatically fits with your coding style.When one is actually working on a project there is never
`time' to make much of the code any good unless the
customer has a clear commitment to long term maintenance/
value added and has a clear understanding of the issues.This means that the only unproblematic way that code sharing
and code reviews can happen is over the long term, with
a body of material which is updated over several projects.Now in fact between Paneris, the PM system and Iglu we
have a pretty substantial body of code and also now the
leisure to review and share it. But I predict that unless
we work at it it will not happen. Perhaps we can play
a game in which we have to rip our code to shreds, and
everyone else has (honestly) to try to defend it :).