John Pfersich <jp1660 at att.net> wrote:
> I not only think that it's not only not pointless to try, but that 
> it's necessary to succeed.  And I can't see why any package  that 
> will be included in the base can't conform to the standards.



We first need to determine what the standards, if any, should be.  I
dearly want any such standard to only be adopted if we are convinced it
will improve things.  The class comments rule has such an argument, but
most of the other proposed rules do not.  If we adopt rules just to have
consistency, then we are just tying our own hands.

General judgement and taste can go a long way without needing any rules.
 We do not necessarily need to have a list of rules to follow.  It is
sufficient to have people with good taste guarding the entry.


On the flip side, bad code cannot be made good just by forcing it into
some conventions.   Do we want to have to accept code just because it
follows some list of rules?  I don't think so -- we should also require
that the most important packages have a certain level of functionality
and quality, for example.  There is no safety to be found in lists of
rules; poor authors will always find a new abheration to circumvent
them.  :)

Okay, that's my general philosophy.  On the specific issue of coding
conventions, I get the impression that we are getting along fine without
them, so I'd tend to hope we just leave things the way we are.  Maybe
I'm mistaken, but from reading this thread I've not heard of people
having particular problems reading Squeak code, especially since they
can fall back on the pretty printer when necessary.  However, if I'm
wrong, and people are having trouble, then indeed let's adopt some
conventions to help out.  I just want to see some expected benefit from
it.

The rules I *really* think we should have are general and high level. 
For example, we might say "packages should be documented well enough
that most people who know the domain can figure out how to use the
package."  


-Lex