Ada '83 Quality and Style:

Guidelines for Professional Programmers

Copyright 1989, 1991,1992 Software Productivity Consortium, Inc., Herndon, Virginia.

CHAPTER 1: Introduction

1.3 To The Experienced Ada Programmer

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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