Coding Standard in Robocode

The most important reason for using the coding standard is the effeciency in debuging code especially with the following elements of coding style:

1. Comment: a meaningful comment is very useful for understanding the method or each line of code. Accordign to The Element of Java Style, comment is summary of interface, class, or method. By having a clear comment for each method, others rather than the author of the code can easily debug the code without asking the code author. Other programmer can also identify the pitfall in the code by just comparing the code's objective and its actual functionality.

2. Naming Convention: by having a standard naming convention, programmers can identify each names quickly without going back-forth or scrolling up and down between classes. Imagine the scenario of having 10 programmers working on each class of a project using different naming convention. Some use the old naming convention (no vowel with underscore, eg. gt_rpt) for both class, interface, method, an variable. Some use mixed convention, and some use a non-meaningful name. In this case, if someone rather than the author has to debug the code, he or she will spend quite a lot of time to adapt to the new convention and try to debug the code. A mix convention also presents an integration issue which could cause a nightmare.

3. Variable scope: by specifying the class, method, or variable with the keyword 'this, public, or private' has two advantages. First, it ensures the scope of each method or class. Second, it also prevent the common method or variable name issue in different classes especially for a global variable.

Revising Robocode: I spent about two hours for reviewing the coding style in my robocode that consist of thirteen movements. After reading The Elements of Java Style and the ICS coding standard, I realized that I had violated a lot of elements in coding standard. Just to name a few, those violations include a mixing naming convention, variable scope, and comment documentation. Actually, the comment section was a bit scary for me but I was very fortunate to come across Georg's blog that I could use as a sample. Renaming some of the variable name is not so difficult since in fact this project is small and also within Eclipse you can just simply find and replace. The last thing that I did was to ensure the single task in my method and also include a descriptive comment of the method.

Finally, my personal thoughts for the coding style is the rule #1: Adhere to the style of the original seem to be valid for different language not just in Java. Despite the fact that each language has different styles and rules, each project should document the related style use within the project.

To download my improved Robocode, click here.