Re: [phpGroupWare-developers] New developers (Was: Nested db-objects)

[Alan Langford]

On 2008-05-26 20:14, Chris Weiss wrote:
> On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Sigurd Nes <address@hidden> wrote:
>   
> > My problem is that my code base is huge - and I can't keep up with rapid
> > changes in what is considered proper coding at all time.
> >     
>
> the only change to the coding that standards that has even been
> proposed in the last 5 years or more was the line lengths.  We've had
> a coding standards doc since very early, and IMO the separation of
> logic and storage is clear, but it's been ignored and allowed to go
> unchallenged, much to my frustration every time i do try to work on
> some code.
>
> However, as an example of how "no tolerance" affects smaller teams,
> the eGW fork is directly related to putting a foot down on not
> following the design goals and standards.  Joomla being a CMS has a
> large enough demand that they can afford to do this.  We do it and
> loose half the team.
>
>   
At the risk of being accused of putting words in someone's mouth, my 
interpretation of what Sigurd said has less to do with standards for 
formatting code and more to do with standards for software design. As an 
example, a couple of years ago, templates were cool, now anything that's 
not MVC sucks. This is a reflection of the ongoing evolution of software 
development from a fine art to an engineering discipline. It's been a 
constant factor for several decades, and it's likely to continue at the 
same pace for some time to come.

It's very difficult to track this evolution when you have a significant 
body of code to maintain. In a lot of cases, the most viable solution is 
to trash existing code and implement from scratch, saving little more 
than the UI design and the evolved definition of requirements. I am very 
sympathetic to this complaint, having been in the same position 
countless times over the years. However, I have come to accept that it's 
almost always worth the time to invest in moving to the new methods, 
given that they've been well proved in practice. One of my fundamental 
assumptions is that anything I am proud of writing today will be 
something I consider to be embarrassing garbage in four year's time. 
These days I just factor this in to my development plans.

The way I see it you can invest twice as much time as you expected 
tracking these sorts of changes now, or ten times as much trying to dig 
yourself out of a very deep hole later.

As for "no tolerance", there really isn't much of that with Joomla. 
Aside from losing a lot of talent in the huge "extensions must be GPL" 
issue, which was driven from legal interpretations of the GPL more than 
some deep seated philosophy, proposals and differences of opinion are 
usually worked out through long (sometimes very long) discussions in the 
lists and forums. We try very hard to come to a well reasoned consensus 
before making something policy.  This is seriously complicated by the 
popularity of the package, since no matter what is done, some segment of 
the user base will become very upset as a result. What we would not 
tolerate is this sort of morale-sucking sniping between team members. 
It's hard to remember sometimes that the biggest reward of working on 
open source software is that it can be fun. We work hard to preserve 
that. It's all about having fun.