cultural/personal programming styles

[teuben]

Discussion topic: cultural/personal programming styles
Brief description of issue/challenge: Different styles of programming can really impede on sustainability. I have seen several in my projects, from private vs. public repos divergence, different versions of the software maintained at different locations. One would have thought in this modern day and age of communications and CMS this would not happen, but I feel this is more a person (cultural) issue than anything else. Some of this will be solved in our efforts on education, but can it really be. What if I have a collaborator who insists writing software is a minimalistic approach like presenting a paper (i.e. no regression, no details how figures were created etc.).
I am wondering if my anecdotes are more often seen, and can we address those?
Lead/moderator:
Links to resources:

[aterrel]

Are you asking about how to encourage a community practices that are beneficial and rewarding for the community beyond a paper?

On that note, I have always presented Team Geek as a book that addresses this issue in context of the svn project:

• http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018025.do

[cryos]

There are some great tools that can also be employed to reduce friction/automate indentation styles, etc. Those approaches can help mediate these issues, but still require acceptance on the social side. Good point, and I have seen issues crop up around some of this.

[teuben]

I'm talking about deeper personal issues probably, those that might be helped with training and time, but there are still collaborators who do not believe much in sharing in full, sustainability etc. In addition ego issues that result in code forking.