A Whole New Can of Worms

by James Moll

(Taken from the ACFUG mailing list, with permission of the author. This was a response to Sean Harrison's challenge to clean up the formatting on our CF code):

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I would like to extend your challenge to include the regular 'ole html code, as well as CF code. I've been a "corporate", enterprise-oriented developer now since the mid '80s, coding in COBOL, REXX, C, VB, etc., and over the last couple years, HTML, Cold Fusion, and some ASP. In any programming language/IDE, you expect to run into different formatting preferences, as well as some expected laziness...but until I started doing web-related stuff, never in my varied development career have I ever witnessed such utter and total lack of any type of attempted code formatting discipline whatsoever! I don't mean to be a developer snob here, but I've just shrugged it off as being a by-product of the original nature and intent of html, and therefore its use and adoption by "designer" and "content supplier" types (read "non-programmers").

But enough already! By the very fact that we are using the ColdFusion application server, and that this is a ColdFusion users group list, we all here are now officially "application developers," not simply web page "designers". As a result of your newly christened title, there is, like many titles in the world, some implied responsibilities that are now expected of you as a "developer"....to wit,

1. THOU SHALT FORMAT THY CODE TO FACILITATE READABILITY AND MAINTENANCE.
2. THOU SHALT FORMAT AND INDENTETH NOT ONLY THY CF CODE, BUT ALSO THY HTML, AND THY JAVASCRIPT.

(ok, I don't really have time to parody a full set of 10 commandments, but I think you get the drift...)

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