Standards (was Re: indentation: enough already!)

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <3245 at ingr.com.> crossgl at ingr.UUCP (Gordon Cross) writes:
>What should they care so long as it works??!!!  As an end user of something
>like "ksh", I couldn't care less about the style of the source code because
>the program works.

No, it doesn't; it has bugs.  What should the customer do if one of the
bugs simply HAS to be fixed?  Remember that in the government's case, it
owns the deliverables (source code, etc.) and is responsible for fixing
the bug itself (which it might do by an additional contract).  Certainly
maintainability of the delivered product is a valid requirement.  What
is wrong is the particular way the regulations attempted to achieve
maintainability (by legislating coding style).