What was the strangest coding standard rule that you were forced to follow? [closed]

Answer 1

Using generic numbered identifier names

At my current work we have two rules which are really mean:

Rule 1: Every time we create a new field in a database table we have to add additional reserve fields for future use. These reserve fields are numbered (because no one knows which data they will hold some day) The next time we need a new field we first look for an unused reserve field.

So we end up with with customer.reserve_field_14 containing the e-mail address of the customer.

At one day our boss thought about introducing reserve tables, but fortunatly we could convince him not to do it.

Rule 2: One of our products is written in VB6 and VB6 has a limit of the total count of different identifier names and since the code is very large, we constantly run into this limit. As a "solution" all local variable names are numbered:

• Lvarlong1
• Lvarlong2
• Lvarstr1
• ...

Although that effectively circumvents the identifier limit, these two rules combined lead to beautiful code like this:

...

If Lvarbool1 Then
  Lvarbool2 = True
End If

If Lvarbool2 Or Lvarstr1 <> Lvarstr5 Then
  db.Execute("DELETE FROM customer WHERE " _ 
      & "reserve_field_12 = '" & Lvarstr1 & "'")
End If

...

You can imagine how hard it is to fix old or someone else's code...

Latest update: Now we are also using "reserve procedures" for private members:

Private Sub LSub1(Lvarlong1 As Long, Lvarstr1 As String)
  If Lvarlong1 >= 0 Then 
    Lvarbool1 = LFunc1(Lvarstr1)
  Else
    Lvarbool1 = LFunc6()
  End If
  If Lvarbool1 Then
    LSub4 Lvarstr1
  End If
End Sub

EDIT: It seems that this code pattern is becoming more and more popular. See this The Daily WTF post to learn more: Astigmatism :)

Answer 2

I worked at a place that had a merger between 2 companies. The 'dominant' one had a major server written in K&R C (i.e. pre-ANSI). They forced the Java teams (from both offices -- probably 20 devs total) to use this format, which gleefully ignored the 2 pillars of the "brace debate" and goes straight to crazy:

if ( x == y ) 
    {
    System.out.println("this is painful");
    x = 0;
    y++;
    }

Answer 3

Forbidden:

while (true) {

Allowed:

for (;;) {

Answer 4

Once worked on a project where underscores were banned. And I mean totally banned. So in a c# winforms app, whenever we added a new event handler (e.g. for a button) we'd have to rename the default method name from buttonName_Click() to something else, just to satisfy the ego of the guy that wrote the coding standards. To this day I don't know what he had against the humble underscore

Answer 5

Back in my C++ days we were not allowed to use ==,>=, <=,&&, etc. there were macros for this ...

if (bob EQ 7 AND alice LEQ 10)
{
   // blah
}

this was obviously to deal with the "old accidental assignment in conditional bug", however we also had the rule "put constants before variables", so

if (NULL EQ ptr); //ok
if (ptr EQ NULL); //not ok

Just remembered, the simplest coding standard I ever heard was "Write code as if the next maintainer is a vicious psychopath who knows where you live."

Answer 6

reverse indentation. For example:

    for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
        {
myFunc();
        }

and:

    if(something)
        {
// do A
        }
    else
        {
// do B
    }