As I am about to be finish with school here and starting out as a basement coder my syntax usage of various languages is 'Unique' at best. I was curious if professionally I should relearn a better way or just keep trucking.
I doubt someone will not hire someone because say in perl
while ($loopcounter < 10) {
is used instead of
while ($loopcounter < 10)
{
But is there a way "professionally" I should be doing this?
I think you're right - as long as the code validates and can be read by others - I don't think you'll be faulted. As a former recruiter, I'd recommend you focus on your soft skills - think about the points you'd like to project positively during an interview and practice them.
Anyone can code. But working with a programmer / coder who gets the big picture and can communicate well are true selling points.
Best of luck in your endeavors.
Professionally if your code is neat and your style consistent, anyone who you want to work with will look beyond that without hesitation.
It is helpful if you are fairly close to a popular style, but other than that consistency and readability are the main things.
If anyone really has an issue with your style and can't see beyond that, they are not professionals themselves and aren't worth working with for any duration. Although as a first job, any experience is good, and at worst you'll have some amusing anecdotes you can tell your more sensible coworkers ten years from now.
Each shop is likely to have its own "house style", likely established by the first influential and productive programmers who built the first pass of the source code. Some languages have an idiomatic style promulgated in Usenet groups, popular books, and the language's core library code. You can start by aligning your style for a given language with what seems to be the most common in the publicly available examples.
As for interviewing and getting hired, it's best to demonstrate consistency. Even if your style is unique, your consistency will demonstrate confidence in your choice, and show that even if you have to bend to learn a new house style, you're capable of adopting that style throughout your work.
1) Nobody will reject to hire you if your bracing style is different (and if they do, they are not worth working for anyways)
2) However, you MUST be flexible enough to adopt prevaling styles used in whereever you work. If 90% of their code uses some style, your contributions to that code base MUST follow the style.
3) As others have said, consistency in your own style is important - it shows that you'd be able to have consistency with overall codebase (see #2)
Although python specific - the python styleguide might be a good place to look for some pointers: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/
As others have said readability, consistency and clarity are important.