To enforce a valid coding style in the community!

[Revan]

Originally Posted by sabret00the

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 would very much like for you to show me the thread in the PHP forum that reads "Please help me verify this segment of code conforms to vBulletin Coding Standards".
If I ever saw such a thread, I would be happy to clean up the code for the user, and also post a link to the Manual, showing him where to reference for the future.
As for the people saying "If you clean the code for them, they'll never learn.", I disagree. What WILL prohibit learning is no-one they look up to pointing out the flaws in their coding. I could have an user with 5 posts tell me he disagreed with my coding standards (if it weren't for the fact that I already comply to an extensive degree with the vBulletin Coding Standards ), and I would simply ignore him.

What's the difference between a volunteer team of members checking hacks and pointing out these flaws, or someone who actually has this as a job on this board? Nothing forces the coder to comply.

I can agree with the people saying it would be a kick to the scrotum to get your hack denied from the board, but this has already been changed in the original post, so this argument is invalid.

As for the labels, I think a newbie hack installer has a right to know if this hack has been coded as per a set of standards. This will make the user feel more secure about installing the hack, because he can be certain the odds of this hack destroying something on this board are minute.
I think we should be careful to cuddle the coders enough to put the end-user at risk.

I propose the following change to this idea:
4 levels of labels for a hack:

1. Valid - The hack complies with the vB Coding Standards both in terms of PHP and Source Code Formatting.
2. Cleared - The hack's PHP is optimised, but it has obvious flaws in Coding Style
3. Warning - Neither the hack's PHP or the hack's Coding Style complies
4. Pending - Pending evaluation (default for new hacks)

If a hacker is determined to become a part of the community, he will accept that he has to learn and not publically release 15 hacks before finally wising up his style.
There could even be a new forum where aspiring hackers can post their "raw" hacks for tips and pointers on how to optimise it and make it comply.

I just feel that I have seen too many horribly coded hacks (one of them is a major hack that is even SOLD, Darkwaltz4 will know what I'm talking about ).
Jelsoft creates out-of-the-box clean and fairly optimised code, they have spent many developer hours making their product more hacker friendly, something they really didn't HAVE do to, but did it anyways. Is it really fair to repay them by allowing any form of garbage (as garbage can come from experienced coders as well as newbies), degrading the performance of their product, then whine to them about how it's running slow? Hardly.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Erwin

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

Extremely annoying as well, makes debugging a pain.

Originally Posted by Erwin

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.

That's an added bonus, yes

Originally Posted by Erwin

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

That's a good idea, but there would HAVE to be a label showing the end-user that this hack did not go through validation.

Originally Posted by Erwin

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 if the author is unwilling to fix his hack even with the help of others, the end-user should be warned, IMO.

Originally Posted by Erwin

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

Me.

[bigcurt]

Well, before I even start posting let it be stated I am not a coder of this community ( other than HTML ) therefore I am not aware of the "coding standard" of which you speak, but if I am getting this straight you would like for a group of "advanced coders" to get together and look around and mark hacks that they believe are flawless in functionality and mark them as "perfect". Well answer me this question, What about the beginning coders? Guy comes in and makes a hack that alot of people love using, but he also sees that the hack has been up for a while and was not marked as perfect. Does this not discourage the coder? It would me! Just as boofo said it reflects back on the coder and his style of coding and discourages him, if I come to a community and release a "hack" but I am discouraged with grief of not having the right "coding format" or being "n00b" I simply wont release a hack.

The plain and simple point is, is that without coders this site would DIE..simple as that..without the volunteers among us that take there time and energy to code...this site simply would not last and we would be with default vB or we would have to code ourselves without any help from a community.

Now, I am not going to get into a "name calling" fight..but the fact that you dare come here and make many posts discouraging the members of this community is sick and wrong. hellsatan makes hacks for this site and his own, he is gracious enough to release whatever code he makes free of use and he should be thanks for that ( along with plenty of others who have done this also, boofo, livewire, danny, sabret00the...everyone ) If you have your ideas of a "perfect world" where everyone code is perfect and flawless..that is fine...make a site and charge a monthly fee for it ( cause it seems you are so set on making money I see ) But you remember that you started out somewhere also, just like everyone else. Please do not be an ass on this site, I have rarely seen you make a thread in good mind set.

That is all I have to say..and despite whatever name calling may come back up, I will not reply to it..I am just saying what I believe.

~SmallCurt

[sabret00the]

Originally Posted by Revan

I would very much like for you to show me the thread in the PHP forum that reads "Please help me verify this segment of code conforms to vBulletin Coding Standards".
If I ever saw such a thread, I would be happy to clean up the code for the user, and also post a link to the Manual, showing him where to reference for the future.
As for the people saying "If you clean the code for them, they'll never learn.", I disagree. What WILL prohibit learning is no-one they look up to pointing out the flaws in their coding. I could have an user with 5 posts tell me he disagreed with my coding standards (if it weren't for the fact that I already comply to an extensive degree with the vBulletin Coding Standards ), and I would simply ignore him.

no theirs no posts that say is this valid, but their are posts that ask how do you do this? why not show them with valid code?

and with the second thing i was speaking from a personal POV i know that if you tell me my codes wrong despite it working you lose my interest where as if you play with the words and your approach it can work wonders, it's like a woman with cleavage asking for a ride compared to a headmistress looking lass.

why dog on someone because they don't meet your interpretation or what something should be? if theirs no security holes give them time to improve themselves as i assure you for everyone you get to come round to your way of thinking, you'll get another that you caused to give up.

Originally Posted by Revan

I propose the following change to this idea:
4 levels of labels for a hack:

1. Valid - The hack complies with the vB Coding Standards both in terms of PHP and Source Code Formatting.
2. Cleared - The hack's PHP is optimised, but it has obvious flaws in Coding Style
3. Warning - Neither the hack's PHP or the hack's Coding Style complies
4. Pending - Pending evaluation (default for new hacks)

If a hacker is determined to become a part of the community, he will accept that he has to learn and not publically release 15 hacks before finally wising up his style.
There could even be a new forum where aspiring hackers can post their "raw" hacks for tips and pointers on how to optimise it and make it comply.

I just feel that I have seen too many horribly coded hacks (one of them is a major hack that is even SOLD, Darkwaltz4 will know what I'm talking about ).
Jelsoft creates out-of-the-box clean and fairly optimised code, they have spent many developer hours making their product more hacker friendly, something they really didn't HAVE do to, but did it anyways. Is it really fair to repay them by allowing any form of garbage (as garbage can come from experienced coders as well as newbies), degrading the performance of their product, then whine to them about how it's running slow? Hardly.

as i said make it automated utilizing PHP and regex's or not at all, that way theirs no people involved to hurt feelings and only the people that want their hacks validated get them validated.

[Revan]

Originally Posted by bigcurt

make a site and charge a monthly fee for it ( cause it seems you are so set on making money I see )

Quote me the post where we have mentioned money, please

Originally Posted by sabret00the

no theirs no posts that say is this valid, but their are posts that ask how do you do this? why not show them with valid code?

I dont know about DV but I don't venture there much because I can rarely code off the top of my head, so it would be too much testing and hassle.

Originally Posted by sabret00the

and with the second thing i was speaking from a personal POV i know that if you tell me my codes wrong despite it working you lose my interest where as if you play with the words and your approach it can work wonders, it's like a woman with cleavage asking for a ride compared to a headmistress looking lass.

See the next point of this post.

Originally Posted by sabret00the

why dog on someone because they don't meet your interpretation or what something should be? if theirs no security holes give them time to improve themselves as i assure you for everyone you get to come round to your way of thinking, you'll get another that you caused to give up.

Do you think we were going to hound them day and night, never giving them rest until they comply? Wrong. We would simply notify the coder and warn the end-user. If this discourages the coder, then that coder is a carebear and really should toughen up if he wants to survive in life. Constructive critisism is the core of all learning.

[Boofo]

Sabe, it sure took you long enough to get involved in this thread.

I'm not saying the idea isn't good, just do it without the labels. We can help one another better our coding standards without labeling them in any way. Make a forum and let people ask for help and get their code looked at and improvemenets suggested. But labelling anyone is only going to cause hurt feelings and problems.

[Andreas]

I like the idea a Hacker can opt-in for Validation and the different levels proposed by Revan.

Count me in for the review Team

[sabret00the]

Originally Posted by Revan

Quote me the post where we have mentioned money, please

I dont know about DV but I don't venture there much because I can rarely code off the top of my head, so it would be too much testing and hassle.
See the next point of this post.
Do you think we were going to hound them day and night, never giving them rest until they comply? Wrong. We would simply notify the coder and warn the end-user. If this discourages the coder, then that coder is a carebear and really should toughen up if he wants to survive in life. Constructive critisism is the core of all learning.

how does it sit right with you that you're willing to say "you're code is ++++, fix it" but you're not willing to say "oh to do that, try this" come on, if any system like the one you're backing was put into place, i'd suggest that all 'validators' had a record or helping needy coders before they even thought about validating code.

and while you're not saying you're hounding em, didn't i read up above that you'd like to filter out un-standardized code and even possibly disallow un-standardised code? if that's not hounding people i don't know what is.

funny thing about this thread is, that i've spent most of my time the past couple weeks on a literature peer review system lol.

[bigcurt]

Originally Posted by Revan

Quote me the post where we have mentioned money, please

I was actually referring to his sig and the fact of the thread a week or 2 ago about releasing paid hacks on vbulletin.org


~Curt

[sabret00the]

Originally Posted by Boofo

Sabe, it sure took you long enough to get involved in this thread.

i was pretending i had something better to do with my time

[calorie]

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