My feelings on coding standards lie somewhere along a continuum between “I understand the usefulness of coding standards” and “why must I suffer through them”. Today, I lean more towards the later as I realized that I did not configure my checker correctly during my assignment until after I had turned it in.
The only reasonable argument that I see for coding standards is the benefit that they provide during collaboration, and this benefit is immense. Coding standards significantly improve readability of code. If everyone working on a project writes code with the same format, the exact same format, they will be able to read code written by others much quicker and easier. I liken the use of coding standards to the syntax standards of written language. If there were no set rules for writing books, they would be more difficult to read. If everyone did not use double quotations when writing dialogue, the reader may be able to figure out that a character is speaking, but it would certainly take far longer without the commonly accepted and easily recognizable syntax.
Here lies the crux of the unbeatable argument in favor of coding standards, time is money. Sure, the frustrations that arise from trying to understand code written in an unfamiliar style can be a lot to deal with, but in the end, the true cost of unstandardized code is money. A business would be foolish not to implement standards, as any time spent trying to read code is money wasted. Yet, despite my comprehension of this topic, I still find myself kicking and screaming inside whenever I have to deal with these standards.
I taught myself to code using a combination of books, online resources, and endless hours of trial and error before I started at the University. When you learn this way, you do so through resources that were written, posted, and filmed over many periods of time, by countless individuals of varying degrees of proficiency, and this process left me with a style that is uniquely my own. I realized that this style is not the most efficient, far from the most beautiful, and undoubtedly far from poetic, but changing it often feels like speaking with a new accent and when my code works perfectly and I still get errors, it can be frustrating.
In the end, I realize that my personal frustrations are no reason to resist adapting coding standards and if I expect to have a career in this industry, I need to get used to them. Therefore, even though I may be kicking and screaming inside, on the outside I will continue to adapt and strive to improve because if there is one thing I know for certain, I will never reach a point in my life with any activity, that I had no room for improvement.