In response to a very old thread I decided to setup a survey to get some insight and perhaps find a common dominator in naming conventions used with Servoy.
The result of this survey will eventually be used to compile a whitepaper for naming conventions in Servoy development.
So my request is if you could spare 45 minutes or so to answer these 38 questions.
Thanks!
Edit: URL removed after deadline expired.
This is a good thing to bring up. I’m interested to hear what other people are doing.
As for us, since we now have 4 people here working on Servoy, we created this 10 page Servoy Programming Style Guide. We still have a bit more work to do on it, but it was very helpful recently when we hired the 4th member of the team to very easily learn the style and conventions we use. I’ve attached the document if you’re interested.
On the last page, the Appendix sums up most of the naming conventions. We stole the commenting for the header part of the methods from Mr. Cusick after looking at some of his servoy modules. It is a nice way to note what parameters the method takes in and returns.
DDC_ServoyProgStyleGuide.pdf (230 KB)
Hi Scott,
goldcougar:
This is a good thing to bring up. I’m interested to hear what other people are doing.
Thanks! I will post an analyses of the survey when it’s done. Of course the results will be anonymous.
goldcougar:
I’ve attached the document if you’re interested.
Thanks! Yep, any more info how others are using naming conventions the better
As of now 7 people have submitted to the survey. I hope a lot more will submit their information as well.
Keep 'm coming people !
I will keep the survey-form up until september 10, 2006. After that I’ll try to get the paper out before ServoyWorld.
Hello Robert
ROCLASI:
In response to a very old thread I decided to setup a survey to get some insight and perhaps find a common dominator in naming conventions used with Servoy.
The result of this survey will eventually be used to compile a whitepaper for naming conventions in Servoy development.So my request is if you could spare 45 minutes or so to answer these 38 questions.
Thanks!
At last I decided to give my thoughts to your request. As I think that when there is (after the analys stage, or even better after using such a thing as Problem Frames from Mr. Michael Jackson (not the singer .-)) a design stage in producing a software application, there is not much need for naming conventions in the implementation stage. As an example, I don’t see a need to code into (attribute) names the datatyp if one specifies it in the data model (or even in Servoy itself). These sort of conventions can lead to either a lot of work or produce after a while quite some inconsistencies, if not always properly updated on any change.
As, in my opinion unfortunatly, with Servoy as well, many of the needed conventions are because of the (implementing) tool itself. It either can only sort certain things alphabetically (very often the only sort criteria) or has other restrictions, as for example in Servoy there can not be two same named relationship names (of course between different entities, i. e. tables) which is at least for a bigger Entity Relationship Diagram normal (common) or two same named forms, even in different modules, as they get (at the moment at least) merged to one final solution.
So I would much more prefer to get these things solved in Servoy instead of havig a thick paper of naming convention. Sorry if I have a completely different view as you may have. But I thougt, as you asked and I still have some (little) hope these things get fixed one day I better say my opinion (instead of not answering, what I originally wanted to do).
I fullfilled your survey as good as I could.
Best regards, Robert
Hi Robert,
First of all thank you for still filling in this survey AND for your comments.
Also let me say that the questions of this survey are not a precursor of what will be ‘dictated’ in the whitepaper. It’s foremost a survey to see what people do and how and what they don’t do.
I very much agree with you that we need to use naming conventions because of the tools we use. It would be wonderful if Servoy would give us some way to handle all the situations that require such a convention like making it fully reference oriented, even in methods. But that will not happen soon if ever. But who knows.
Right now we have a situation of a very mixed group of Servoy developers. There are those who have no programming experience whatsoever and there are those who are seasoned programmers that know how to use a good convention as a second nature, and anything in between.
So this whitepaper will fill a need, as I already have read in the comments in the survey.
But true, it’s treating the symptoms (to some extend) instead of the cause but it’s the best remedy we have for the moment.
Hi Robert
Thanks for your response and the hard work you do for the community, I very much appreciate it! Sometimes I am not sure if my english is precise enough to bring the message accross as wished, especially with such difficult themes.
ROCLASI:
Hi Robert,First of all thank you for still filling in this survey AND for your comments.
Also let me say that the questions of this survey are not a precursor of what will be ‘dictated’ in the whitepaper. It’s foremost a survey to see what people do and how and what they don’t do.
I agree with you, where we need it, it’s helpful to have good naming conventions, and as good naming conventions is not easy to define it may be most helpful to know what others are doing to may be apply their ideas into our own work.
ROCLASI:
I very much agree with you that we need to use naming conventions because of the tools we use. It would be wonderful if Servoy would give us some way to handle all the situations that require such a convention like making it fully reference oriented, even in methods. But that will not happen soon if ever. But who knows.
These requirements, which are not directly measurable in terms of functionality, seem for most tool developers not so important, although - in my opinion only - they would help the developer a lot. What do you think if we could add to your whitepaper at the end a chapter of suggestions where we describe what tool enhancement could/would replace a convention?
ROCLASI:
Right now we have a situation of a very mixed group of Servoy developers. There are those who have no programming experience whatsoever and there are those who are seasoned programmers that know how to use a good convention as a second nature, and anything in between.
So this whitepaper will fill a need, as I already have read in the comments in the survey.
But true, it’s treating the symptoms (to some extend) instead of the cause but it’s the best remedy we have for the moment.
I see it as you, but of course I would be very happy if some symptoms could be cured by curing the cause
Thanks again Robert for your work, as I said I appreciate it very much and hope it is the stimulus to make Servoy Developer to an extraordinary tool in this respect as well!
Best regards, Robert
Right now 12 people have send in their answers and I would love to have a bunch more.
I am pretty certain that we have more than 12 active Servoy developers around the world.
So to all the Harjos, Grahams, Marcels, Bobs, etc. don’t be shy and participate in this survey.
I’ll keep the survey up till monday 11th, 10 AM GMT, so that’s tomorrow.
Thanks!
Okay the survey is now closed. I removed the url from the original message and the page is no longer available.
12 people have entered their answers. Somewhere at the end of this week I will post a small analyses of the data.
To be continued…
ROCLASI:
So to all the Harjos, Grahams, Marcels, Bobs, etc. don’t be shy and participate in this survey.
Ummmm… I am one of the 12… 
bcusick:
ROCLASI:
So to all the Harjos, Grahams, Marcels, Bobs, etc. don’t be shy and participate in this survey.Ummmm… I am one of the 12…
Ah! Then you must be one of the 2 anonymous posters. Thanks for your participation!