As I have been going through different code bases, I keep seeing things that just really amaze me. It all surrounds coding standards, or the lack thereof. Different places have different ideas of what is best, and I can only offer mine to the fray. However, once a standard is in place, no matter how odd it may be, it is important to keep to those standards. This is for a few reasons.

First, it is important for readability. By seeing the code in the same format and structure it helps to get through lines of code quickly. It helps because all of the code is in the same format throughout the code. The person looking at the code can quickly understand without having to go back and figure out what is happening because the code is all of a sudden out of whack and what you may think is happening may not be happening. Especially when indentation may also be out of line and brackets are not used. Take for example the two examples below

$fin=0;
foreach($var as $v){
if($v==3){$fin=$v+3}
unset($fin);echo $v; 
}

As a stand alone example it may be easy to decipher what is happening. In a file that has over 3000 lines of code, it may be overlooked and even cause issues if changes are made that affect that block. By breaking from the set coding standards and doing it “your own way”, sure it may be quicker for you, but it creates havoc, even for you later on.
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