Software Monkey's Articles

These articles are just my opinion; please do not feel any obligation to agree. If they do nothing more than challenge your existing ideas, I will consider that they have done their job.

All articles contain the date published and the date last updated. This latter date refers only to significant alterations or additions to the content of the article, not to spelling or typographical corrections.

Articles follow in the order written; the right side index lists the articles in alphabetical order.

Code Layout & Formatting

This article focuses primarily on examining issues of indentation style, but touches on other broad aspects of formatting and alignment of code. Let me caveat up front that the coder who uses variable pitch fonts will likely need to ignore those parts of this article which relate to alignment, but the primary focus of indent style applies to all coders and all program and markup languages.

Coding Standards

This article details my personal coding standards for C-like syntax languages. Strict application of these standards is expected of a junior level programmer. It is expected that more senior team members can exercise judgement in applying the details to specific situations.

Code Bloat - On Size and & Efficiency

Is it just me, or has the whole software industry by and large bought into the lie that size and performance doesn't matter anymore? Are we programmers so incredibly full of hubris that we really believe that our time as a programmer is so much more valuable than our user's time - even though that time is multiplied by many hundred, thousand, or in some cases million individuals? It all kind of reminds me of a visit to the dentist or the doctor - you know the one where you have an appointment at 10:00 am, and if the doctor see's you before 11:30 you consider yourself fortunate.