To enforce a valid coding style in the community!

[Boofo]

You deserve it, sir. Hell, take another one!

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Boofo

Excellent post, LW.

Agreed!

Everyone has to start somewhere and imposing a judgemental process to releases would simply stem the flow of new ideas coming into the community.

Plus there is the problem that no one seemed to mention. Once you get QA'ed, what about future upgrades? As soon as you update you would have to lose the status again until the qa team got around to rechecking your changes.

Far too much micro management.

Why not simply check the macks when you have time and make a post saying 'checked through the code for version 1.39833535730' and it looks great! Or make some suggestions if not. Seems more constructive and realistic.

The idea as a whole is a nice utopian one - but not dooable on a productive large scale like this.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Just another stupid remark of me:
Based on the title of this thread 'coding style' is always open to interpretation and taste.

There are some things how vB is coded, that i don't like, and i will never use it, i will always use my own 'style'. So i guess my (h/m/p)acks would never get the QA label.

But i agree that it could scare away new coders if it was implemented.

[akanevsky]

Since seemingly many of you here cannot read past the first post - I'd like ya'll to read it again.
I edited it to describe the NEW way the QA team would work.

This isn't a highschool playground

Oh. And how come you acting like you are on one?

You are treating it as if it is or should be...

You are right. It should be. Because amond PHP developers, Jelsoft's code is the best.

1. Badly written code
AND
2. Well-written code that looks bad
In case 1, the code is badly written so that there are more queries, it is inefficient etc.
In case 2, the code works well, but just looks bad - ie. it's not formatted nicely in separate lines with comments.

I was actually talking about both. To help remove any excess queries or inefficiency plus help format the code the best way possible.

Teaching him how to do it right is altogether different than chastising him in public with some sort of label. That will turn some otherwise good coders off from trying to learn and make it better.

Not teaching. Helping with suggestions...
People learn HTML. It is not cross-browser compatible in some ways, so it makes a lot more problems than pure formatting. Yet there you are - people learn both HTML and XHTML.

i would never expect to pass QA or any other standard

You would not need to pass. Your hack will be published the same way as the ones marked by QA...

Instead of "This hack is not quality assured and therefore is garbage"

Again, the hacks that have not been perfected, will not be marked as "garbage" in any way...
If they are, then you must agree that when there is a HOTM, all the rest of the hacks is marked as garbage.

Bottom line - nobody would "approve" or not "approve" anything. Just once a code of some hack has been perfected in ITS STRUCTURE, it would be marked as being so.

about personal preferences..

There is such thing as common sense. And there are a few ways that when being followed make the code easier to read, edit and understand for the majority (except for the masochists).

[Boofo]

But would the average person who installs the hack think a hack is less than standard just because it was labeled that way? Yes, and that would stop them from wanting to install it which would reflect back on the coder and then we have that situation to deal with.

I'm not saying it isn't a good idea on paper, but to implement it on a board such as this where we are learning and helping one another almost daily, it would do a lot more harm than good in the end. Poeples feelings are involved, too.

[Logikos]

Out of the 15 people who replied here, only one wants this system implemented. I don't see this happening in the near future. We should just move on...

[Revan]

Two, TYVM

[southernlady]

Jelsoft/Vbulletin is XHTLM 1.0 transitional W3C compliant and so it would make sense that any code/hack added to it should also be XHTLM 1.0 transitional W3C compliant.

Now, why CAN'T we as a community have an oversight group of advanced coders to see that the rest live up to that standard prior to posting a code?

As somone else pointed out, an open source community does it and does it well...validates each one of their hacks prior to release. They have a minimum that the hackers have to code to and if that isn't met the hack isn't passed, plain and simple. And if you know going into the process, why should it be a problem?

It's kind of like getting your DL...if you know going into the test that this is the minimum standard, and you fail to meet it, than why should it bother you to not pass? Put out a list of the minimum standard for a code for a Jelsoft hack and then put together a team of volunteers and see what happens. Just because it failed the first time doesn't mean it will fail now...MAKE IT WORK. All it takes is people who want it to work but if you are convinced it won't, then it won't.

It would also be helpful if the hacks that were updated were indicated that way...I've noticed that some listed as beta 1 are 5 pages deep and are now working on RC1.

As for quoting entire posts...that is considered rude by netiquette standards. One should only use the part of the posts that is needed to the conversation at hand.

Liz

[sabret00the]

what an intresting thread this was, why did it have to go on so long? what is it about coders and a lack of people skills

first off i'd like to state that i'd much rather see a team of people validating xhtml then code and second of all i'd like to say this thread waws rather trollopish.

while in essense what's being suggested is a nice idea, theirs nothing stopping anyone from offering the author assistance via pm, do you know how much it bugs me when i have to install a hack where the existing code is like \t\t\t\t\t in on the page and then the hack is just \t if that, but go all medievil on someone because they didn't do a line break in the right place is just wrong.

it's weird as i'm one of the folks that started here unable to code and gradually got better by putting out ++++ty code. see it works like this, you set out to do something you accomplish it, people appreciate it and you try for something bigger and better, that's how coding works for me, if i hadn't put out this then i wouldn't have tried for that and if i hadn't have tried for that then i wouldn't have had to learn that and so on and so forth, now my coding style is ALOT better, though i've not managed to build anything to showcase it but being ranks off of something that i done a while ago and improved upon isn't right.

if you're going to change peoples code for them they're not going to learn, infact the only way to learn is to let them grow as a coder, so in saying that i beleive that in the same way some strive for XHTML validated or Master Coder you should have the option to strive for vB.org PHP validated, however why this couldn't be done by simply uploading something allowing it to be checked automatically i don't see why not?

in all honesty i checked so see what DV was advising and of course the brinn *cough* i mean the lack of people skills in his approach let him down, and to say that a trinary operator makes the code better than a normal conditional is ludicrous, and things like that need to be avoided.

i do wonder though, for all the people looking to take those elevated positions, how often are you found in the PHP forum helping out the coders who are begging for help? i do find it strange that everyone's so willing to criticise code yet...meh

i also thing this would be a good chance to resuggest the open source forum.

Actually i've just remembered me and when i was first coding and my personal preference was if(condition){ but i needed help quite a bit (nothing's changed there) but stefan said in order for him to read it it needed to be standardized so i had to get into if(condition)\n{ now it's my preference too, the biggest changes are made at ground level, if you're that big on standards then help the next generation to get into them.

blah blah blah, i've waffled on enough now.

[Erwin]

Or just forget the { in an if statement, put it all in the 1 line and end it with a ; .

In PHP, there is more than 1 way to skin a cat.

The truth of the matter is that this is a good idea, and if there are people who have the time and dedication to do this, it would be great. I would mainly see this as a process to fix up security holes in hacks.

But it has to be a voluntary thing - maybe hackers who choose to go through this process can opt in.

We can't really force every hack author to go through this. Like I brought up earlier on, this may discourage new members from releasing hacks they cooked up late one night - it may be badly written, but it may be a great idea, and someone else who downloaded it may recode it and post it back up in the thread. Such a hack may not "pass" the initial review.

But really, a lot of badly written hacks, through the process of others downloading it and upgrading it, do get a lot of kinks fixed up. I can see the value of formalizing this - but like I said, it takes a LOT of time.

Besides Dark Visor, who else would have time to review the potentially thousands of hacks that will get released?