The exceptional beauty of Doom 3’s source code
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 15th Jan 2013 21:24 UTC
General Development "I was really excited to write this article, because it gave me an excuse to really think about what beautiful code is. I still don't think I know, and maybe it's entirely subjective. I do think the two biggest things, for me at least, are stylistic indenting and maximum const-ness. A lot of the stylistic choices are definitely my personal preferences, and I'm sure other programmers will have different opinions. I think the choice of what style to use is up to whoever has to read and write the code, but I certainly think it's something worth thinking about. I would suggest everyone look at the Doom 3 source code because I think it exemplifies beautiful code, as a complete package: from system design down to how to tab space the characters." John Carmack himself replies in the comments.
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RE[5]: Good article
by henderson101 on Wed 16th Jan 2013 16:14 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Good article"
henderson101
Member since:
2006-05-30

"
Compare that to the C#...


That's badly formatted C# "

Your opinion, and bear in mind, OSNews lost my indentation. To me, your code looks suboptimal for readability. I work in a large team, other people picking up classes and libraries I've written is essential. Standard style guides and conformity saves a lot of time and prevents prima donnas. Plus, having come from Pascal, those arguments just waste too much time. Suffice to say:

Lazy programmeritis:

if (x = y) then begin
   .....
end else begin
   ....
end;

I once had a co worker that used this one:

if (x = y) then
  begin
    ...
  end
  else
    begin
    end;

And this one:

if (x = y) then
  begin
  .....
  end
else
  begin
  ......
  end;

Borland style:

if (x=y) then
begin
  ...
end;



And that is just scratching the surface and not even dealing with tabs, etc. It's a holy war, not worth winging about.

For C#, the basic layout I use (and enforce here) is based on the standard Microsoft use in all of their sample code. Sorry if you don't like that, complain to someone who has write access to Microsoft's source repository ;-) Visual Studio also usefully formats this way - why fight the IDE?



if ( X == Null )
{
  Something();
  Somethingelse();
}
else if ( Blah == "Give up" )
{
  Somemore();
}
else
{
  ShootYourself( DateTime.Now );
}


I never use tabs, they are evil. I use 2 spaces for "Tabstop" because otherwise your code shoots off to the right at great speed. I would go for simple over terse single line every time. I tend to (recently) add in extra space in if/else if/method params. This is just a concession to a speed reading on a high res monitor. Text scans better.

You can use blocks in C-derived languages as well


Not exactly the same thing. In Pascal this is one statement:

if (x = y) then dosomthing else dosomthingelse(y);

and so is this:

if (x = y) then begin dosomthing; end else dosomthingelse(y);

and so is this:

if (x = y) then begin dosomthing; doanotherthing(x); end else begin dosomthingelse(y); end;


dosomething and dosomethingelse(..) are compound, as are the other examples. Like I said, the C syntax is sort of similar, but not exactly. Pascal thinks of the compounds as being part of a single statement, with compound elements. Where as C doesn't (IIRC.) The braces in C are just a way to create a block and the if/else links those blocks together. Semantics, I know. But look again at the basic Pascal version:

if (x = y) then dosomthing else dosomthingelse(y);

That is a pure statement, with no semicolon after the first clause. Geddit? :-) C would require 2 statements linking the blocks:

if (x==y) dosomething(); else dosomthingelse(y);

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[6]: Good article
by Savior on Sat 19th Jan 2013 15:27 in reply to "RE[5]: Good article"
Savior Member since:
2006-09-02


if (x = y) then dosomthing else dosomthingelse(y);

That is a pure statement, with no semicolon after the first clause. Geddit?


I don't. How is that any different from
(x == y) ? dosomething() : dosomethingelse(y);
?

Maybe it looks a bit more cryptic than its begin/end counterpart if you embed these kind of statements into each other, but not by much. Stacking ternary statements is always ugly and unreadable, regardless of the language used.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[7]: Good article
by henderson101 on Sat 19th Jan 2013 21:36 in reply to "RE[6]: Good article"
henderson101 Member since:
2006-05-30

Because ? is an operator, not a key word and it doesn't really work in the same way - at least in c#. Plus in Pascal one can have as many segments in the statement as one likes:

if (x = y) then begin do1(); do3(); end else if (x = a) then do2() else begin do4(); end; //3 blocks

if (x = y) then begin do1(); do3(); end else if (x = a) then do2() else begin do4(); if (y = x) then begin do5(); do6(); end else do7(); end; //a 2 block embedded in a 3 block

Obviously, no one would format the code that way - it's just an example.


You can't really implement that using ? without a lot of unreadable complexity.

Reply Parent Score: 2