Styleguide when coding in a static language

Question

I am currently a junior engineer and keen on learning best practices and expanding my experience. My question concerns any static programming language such as Java, C#, C++ etc.

When I am writing code, I like making it easy to read. In my opinion, reading code should be like reading a book. It should be fluent and elegant. Then, even if I do not need to use them, I like prepending this, super–base keywords whenever I can. Ditto for current class name when I want to use constants or static variables/methods.

Consequently, another developer can quickly have a long shot. He knows this method or var is in the current class or in mother class without needed to move to declaration. You may say to me it is really easy to do that with recent IDE. However, I know a bunch of guys who are still working with Vim, Emacs or other editors without these fancy features.

When explaining it, I like comparing my practices to a drama book. We have all read at least one of them, such as Macbeth from Shakespeare. Who has never felt frustrated to go back at the beginning of the book to know who is that character and what part he has in the plot? You did that so many times, right?

My question can be associated to literate programming practices. However, I assumed Donald Knuth's recommandations are more about commenting and adding macros to your code.

So I would like to know your opinions and feedbacks about these practices. Am I doing too much? Should I keep it simpler? Am I breaking OOP rules?

Here is a code sample:

class Bar {
    protected int _motherVar;

    public aBarMethod() { }
}

class Foo extends Bar {
    private static List<String> _strings;

    private int _myPrivateVar;

    public void aMethod() {
        super.aBarMethod();

        this._myPrivateVar++;
        super._motherVar -= 2;
    }

    public static String anotherMethod() {
        String outcome = "";

        for (String s : Foo._strings) {
            outcome += s;
        }

        return outcome;
    }
}

Answer 1

To make your code look nice, first thing you need to do is make correct tabs and spaces, so that the code is aligned just the way that is easy to see how the statements are grouped. Everything else, whether you name the variable 'myVariable' or 'my_variable', is just a matter of your preference. It's also a good practice to comment as much lines of your code as possible. That really helps when you return to your code after some time.

Answer 2

It's a very good thing that you care about this. At the same time, every programmer has gripes about it.

One of mine is that while modern displays have oodles of pixels, you would think that would mean programmers could see more of their code on the screen. What it seems to mean instead is that the code is so puffed up with whitespace that the content is pushed off the screen. This makes the code seemingly more "readable" by giving you less to read :)

Another point of mine is that no amount of readability can make code understandable to someone who isn't where you're at in understanding concepts. I think an important part of the programmer's job is to educate the reader in the basics of what is being done. Without that, they just won't "get it". That's not good, because they may very well decide to re-write it (and break it).