Ada '83 Quality and Style:
Guidelines for Professional Programmers
Copyright 1989, 1991,1992
Software Productivity Consortium, Inc., Herndon, Virginia.
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
As an experienced programmer you are already writing code that conforms to
many of the guidelines in this book. In some areas, however, you may have
adopted a personal programming style that differs from that presented here,
and you might be reluctant to change. Carefully review those guidelines that
are inconsistent with your current style, make sure that you understand their
rationale, and consider adopting them. The overall set of guidelines in this
book embodies a consistent approach to producing high-quality programs that
would be weakened by too many exceptions.
Another important reason for general adoption of common guidelines is
consistency. If all the staff of a project write source text in the same
style, many critical project activities are easier. Consistent code simplifies
formal and informal code reviews, system integration, within-project code
reuse, and the provision and application of supporting tools. In practice,
corporate or project standards may require deviations from the guidelines to
be explicitly commented, so adopting a nonstandard approach may require extra
work.
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