Thread: this pointer?

Originally Posted by brewbuck

I still don't grok the argument. It sounds like you're saying that coding standards are dangerous because people might forget to use them. Okay... People also forget to update comments, they rely on undocumented and fragile behavior, they don't validate input, they don't check array bounds before accessing, etc. It seems like the safest practice is to just not write any code at all because somebody might make a mistake.

Suppose there is a coding standard in place that says "Every variable must be initialized at the point of declaration." I suppose you take issue with this as well, because somebody may forget to adhere? And the answer is to deliberately not initialize variables?

I said I don't like the fact that style-related "standards" dominate every standards doc I've ever seen, as opposed to those that encourage/enforce good programming practices. We *should* be looking for things like programming errors instead of wasting time dotting i's and crossing t's.