(Just thinking out lout a little bit more after writing Re: Starting a New Script ...)

A long time ago, in a galaxy company far, far away ...

Co-worker IH asks: "Who wrote this code?"

Me: "Hmm, definitively not me. And far too structured to be written by HK."

IH: "Yes, I agree. Looking at the names of the identifiers hints at DF, or maybe JF during his first months [when he learned from DF]. It's full of three letter acronyms."

Me: "But JF would have added at least some comments. There is not a single comment, and not a single bit of code that's not absolutely required. Tight, but elegant. DF?"

IH: "Yes, definitely DF. But what does it do?"

Me: "Well, let's start analysing it ..."

And of course, we were right. DF wrote the code, and nobody else touched it after that. Just for fun, we tried that with other pieces of code the team members wrote over the years, and we were often right. We could even guess who wrote the original code, and who changed it later.

When we later explained our little game and its origin to non-IT people, we compared it to wine tasting, and to guessing an author from a piece of text.

In the next episode, same galaxy company, but a different team:

JF, a hardly ever swearing co-worker, asks: "What the *BEEP*? Which *BEEP* *BEEP* has written this *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* piece of code?"

Me: "Show me."

JF: "Here you are."

Me: "Argh! Get it off my screen. It hurts my eyes! It hurts my brain! Get it off! GET IT OFF!"

Me, after wiping off some tears: "Well, it roughly looks like code generated by $StupidMouseClickingCodeGenerator. But why the heck did the author use that *BEEP* tool? It's completely useless here! We are on a completely different target system!"

JF: "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Some clueless worker from the client?"

Me: "Nope, the client does not access that part of the code. It's part of our setup routine. And the client would use tools for the right target."

JF: "So AG?"

Me: "Yes, definitely AG. Who else would use a hammer for a brain surgery?"

JF: "AG definitively needs to learn $ComputerLanguage."

Me: "And our system. It's three months, and still AG has absolutely no clue of what happens here. You will tell AG. I can't do that without insults and swearing."

And of course, we were right again.

Using revision control systems makes the guessing game a lot less interesting (svn log, svn blame), and using strict coding rules and code templates generates more uniform code across the team.

But still then, without looking at the logs, you can see differences in the way team members write code. And you can often identify who wrote a piece of code: "Soft factors" like the length and complexity of subroutines, naming of identifiers, style of the embedded documentation (POD, doxygen), systematic spelling errors in identifiers and documentation, preferred algorithms, and so on.

Alexander