One of my new co-workers had a chance to look over the source code and the code layout yesterday. This morning she came in and told me that she was impressed. I take a lot of care in making my code look clean and organized. If you have to work with code day in and day out for weeks, months, and years, why not make it appealing? It’s why we don’t work in bathrooms.
I have seen far too much source code that looks like ASP, ColdFusion, or C# vomit. Indentation and white space are usually the first casualties. Five blank lines between these methods, no white space between the comment and the comment operator, a private method then an event handler then a property. Pretty soon, you’re relegated to the object browser just to find things.
I can definitely understand why people rely so heavily on IntelliSense. I don’t because I name my methods and properties descriptively. Further, my code is organized by section and then alphabetically within the section—except properties, which I organize according to their layout on the ASPX page. If you follow that convention (or any convention, really), then you’ll be able to find your place in seconds on any code file you find yourself in.
Regrettably, the compliment was the first time anyone’s noticed (or taken a second to point it out). I am beaming presently because of it. She really made my day.
[NOTE: The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]