Re: Procedures are our friends

["Jeff Knope" <jknope@xxxxxxxx>]

To: <mwforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 2:18 PM
Subject: RE: Procedures are our friends

Bridget wrote:


> I would like to have basic programming guidelines to pass onto students.
> I am also in need of guidelines for how a procedure should look; where
> to indent, where to capitalize, should we
> changing the color of the text?

I haven't noticed any clear protocols.  Over time, my own system has 
evolved.  I do two things now that I think help make the code much easier to 
read:

1.  I (sometimes) separate different tasks in a procedure with blank lines. 
This makes any related group of lines stand out as a group.

2. I (usually) get at least some capital letters in every procedure name. 
Most often I use all caps; and I don't use caps for anything else.  Calls to 
a procedure from within another procedure are the "highway junctions" of a 
program, its most basic structure.  These junctions should jump off the page 
at you.  I find that my eye picks up caps real easily.  So they make a kind 
of easy-to-find marker, flagging where there's real "don't miss this" kind 
of action going on.

Those 2 things are about all I do.  I don't indent or use color.

I also work with the editor open wide, rather than the narrow column of a 
regular Tab size.  That makes the lines much more readable for me.  In MWPro 
the "esc" key is a toggle between narrow and wide.  They've done something 
else in EX that I haven't figured out yet.  If anybody knows, please let me 
know.

But all these are entirely personal preferences.

--Jeff


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