Creative ways to punish (or just curb) laziness in coworkers

Question

Like the subject suggests, what are some creative ways to curb laziness in co-workers? By laziness I'm talking about things like using variable names like "inttheemplrcd" instead of "intEmployerCode" or not keeping their projects synced with SVN, not just people who use the last of the sugar in the coffee room and don't refill the jar.

So far the two most effective things I've done both involve the core library my company uses. Since most of our programs are in VB.net the lack of case sensitivity is abused a lot. I've got certain features of the library using Reflection to access data in the client apps, which has a negligible performance hit and introduces case sensitivity in a lot places where it is used. In instances where we have an agreed standard which is compromised by blatant laziness I take it a step further, like the DatabaseController class which will blatantly reject any DataTable passed to it which isn't named dtSomething (ie- must begin with dt and third letter must be capitalised). It's frustrating to have to resort to things like this but it has also gradually helped drill more attention to detail into their heads.

Another is adding some code to the library's initialisation function to display a big and potentially embarrassing (only if seen by a client) message advising that the program is running in debug mode. We have had many instances where projects are sent to clients built in debug mode which has a lot of implications for us (especially with regard to error recovery) and doing that has made sure they always build to release before distributing.

Any other creative (ie- not StyleCop etc) approaches like this?

Answer 1

Have regular code reviews and they will be shamed by the public humiliation (ok, maybe not humiliation). Keep in mind most programmers are not particularly enthusiastic, it's just a job and they want to get home to the kids.

Answer 2

Hi

You tell us that your coworkers don't adhere to an agreed standard out of blatant laziness.

What do they say ? Do they say that the standard is a pile of poo ? That they get nothing out of adhering to the standard ? That they are working 12 hour days 6 days a week to ship working code and that the editor you've provided them with doesn't offer auto-complete to help them make sure that source files adhere to the standard ?

Is any of your co-workers posting on SO asking 'How do I get rid of an interfering co-worker who walks round with a copy of a 10 year old coding standard to beat me over the head with ?'

Please don't be offended, but do think this through. What is their view of the situation ? And is it your job to police their activities ? Why isn't the project manager doing it ?

Regards

Mark

Answer 3

You might want to look into hungarian notation, how it was abused (your example is perfect) and exactly why it's been eschewed for more clear conventions.

Otherwise someone might think you're lazy for not keeping up to date with best practices....

A quick review of the wikipedia article on it, or more to the point Microsoft's guidance on General Naming Conventions might help. Item #4 is "Do not use Hungarian notation"...

Answer 4

Start a contest. Whoever finds and fixes most of this kind of issues during the week gets a free beer or something.

Or push it even further: specify issues which you want to fight with. Every time someone finds one they get a point and code author loses the point (and have to fix it). It means if you find it in own code it's neutral for you but if someone else does it you lose the point.

Then get whiteboard and update stats every day or so. Think about StackOverflow-like achievement system (First crappy variable name found; case sensitivity policeman etc). Make it a game. People will have fun at the same time when they will be fixing code.

Answer 5

I like the idea of counting mistakes and laziness examples. Whoever has the most at the end of each week gets itching powder all over their mouse and keyboard.

Answer 6

Create a subversion hook that runs a lint program on the code as it is checked in. Store this number and if the lint score decreases email the team the revision that caused the regression and the user that caused the regression.

The beauty is this will be automated so you don't seem like the jerk for calling people on BS coding practices. We have much the same issues here.

Answer 7

Have a shirt that says "I broke the build" ... Anyone who does that wears it.