I’m certainly a proponent of having the team work in a more “intimate” environment, but some days it’s just makes it hard to hide and laugh. Yesterday Buddy and Slim had a very animated discussion about one of the coding standards that we are using. To set the stage, let’s first realize that we inherited some standards when we all started on this project. They are standards. Rules to follow so that we are consistent. There is not necessarily a right or wrong, there just is the way.
So, back to the story. Buddy has been writing some code and Slim is working with him to figure out a problem, or answer a question, or something. So I’m sitting there minding my own code when I hear the following conversation:
Slim: Um, you’re going to have to go back through and change all of these variable names so that they follow the standards.
Buddy: Oh?
Slim : Yep they don’t match the coding standards. You’ve read that document haven’t you?
Buddy: Yes. The standards are not right.
Slim : But they are the standards.
Buddy: They are very much for VB. We are using C#. Microsoft doesn’t recommend writing C# in the same way that you write VB.
Slim : They are the standards and you’re going to have to change your code:
Buddy: But the standards are unnatural.
Editors note: When I hear this, I damn near pissed myself. I might even have start to laugh aloud and had to cover it by starting to cough. Needless to say I was now engrossed in the sure to ensue debacle.
Slim : Yep, they are our standards and that’s the way it will be done.
Buddy: (In an insistant tone) But they are unnatural.
Slim : Yep, and that’s the standard that you’ll use.
Buddy: So we are using Hungarian notation?
Slim : Yes
Buddy: But it’s not real Hungarian notation.
Slim : That’s ok, it’s our standard.
Buddy: So what would I change this to?
Slim : objSomething.
Buddy: This is so unnatural.
In the end all I was doing was laughing inside and thinking I should swap Buddy’s standard keyboard for a natural split keyboard and see what he did. In retrospect, perhaps we should start taking Buddy out on the town with us so we can determine which women are natural vs unnatural.