EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Ian S. Piper
Organization : | Diebold Election Systems, Inc.
Post Date : | 9/29/2005
Section Comments
Section : | 4.2.7
Page no. : | 4-7
Line no.: |
Comment : | In this requirement in item (a), the first sentence "All modules shall contain headers." should be removed. Short functions shouldn't require headers. One line functions, where the "purpose, design and conditions" are plainly self explanatory, don't require a header. The requirement to put headers on all functions is actually detrimental to coding practice, as it discourages programmers from decomposing larger functions into small helper functions that would be more readable. Putting a comment on a one-line function called 'GetLineCount()' that returns the 'm_LineCount' member variable isn't practical. With the proposed change, the limit of 'ten' lines could be reduced even further (to say 'five' or 'four'). Proposed change: Remove the following language from this requirement "All modules shall contain headers."