Code You Can Snuggle (following Drupal Coding Standards)

I had proposed this session for DrupalCon SF:

I have come across a fair amount of code in my day, and I don't claim perfection for myself, but so often I see code that literally hurts my eyes and makes my brain just go numb. Bad code leads to bugs, confusion, and just plain wastes time. And in case you were not aware, bad code kills badgers (why does it have to be kittens all the time?).

So, I am here to save the badgers. I, Alan Palazzolo, the Morbus-wanna-be, am going to tell it to you straight: coding standards will get you a hot date (gender indifferent). That's no lie. All you have to do is manage a ticket to Drupal Dev Days (and vote for this session), and you will learn how to code wtih Drupal standards, get a date from anyone, and most importantly, save those cuddly badgers.

The most important thing to remember when writing code is to think: What will I think of this in two year's time? Someone else is probably going to read your code, even if it is not a contributed module. And you could save that person lots of time by just learning some standards and sticking to them. Now think what if YOU were that other person? Yeah, exactly, YOU are that other coder (or will be soon). Isn't that enough to care?

But wait, there's more! Coding standards allows us, as a Drupal, open-source, community solve problems more effectively. Agreeing on standards helps break down communication barriers and facilitates elegant code. Not to mention, standards really keep the stupid flame wars about dot operators down to a minimum. We all come to Drupal with our previous notions of coding habits, but accepting Drupal coding standards allows us to focus on the important things (not the space before or after the dot operator).

My talk will be about the current Drupal coding standards and how you can follow them. I will also go into where standards are going and where we could use some help in creating more and better standards, in my opinion. So act now! I promise lots of badly-photoshoped pictures of badgers.

Slides: 

Code You can Snuggle Slides (sorry its PDF)