Bulldozer00's Blog

One (of many) of my pet peeves can be called “Conscious Degradation Of Style” (CDOS). CDOS is what happens when a programmer purposely disregards the style in an existing code base while making changes/additions to it. It’s even more annoying when the style mismatch is pointed out to the perpetrator and he/she continues to pee all over the code to mark his/her territory. Sheesh.

When I have to make “local” changes to an existing code base, if I can discern some kind of consistent style within the code (which may be a challenge in itself!), I consciously and mightily try to preserve that style when I make the changes – no matter how much my ego may “disagree” with the naming, formatting, idiomatic, and implementation patterns in the code. That freakin’ makes (dollars and) sense, no?

What about you, what do you do?