Expertise in computer science is very specific: an expert in one subject is not an expert in all. “Coding etiquette” is a term used to describe a standardized way of coding. This can include doing simple things like naming variables after what they refer to, to doing more obscure things like sectioning code with return statements so that the location of bugs in the program can be instantly determined. Because of the level of technical jargon and syntax involved in programming (they call them “programming languages” because of this) and the need in jobs for group communication to accelerate program production, this sort of standardization is incredibly important.
But coding etiquette, despite being a way to standardize coding, is ironically not standardized itself: Google’s C++ coding standards differ from Microsoft’s C# coding standards, for example with basic variable naming: Google would have you separate words in a variable name like this_is_my_variable while Microsoft would have you separate words in a variable name like thisIsMyVariable. This is not a major difference, but the differences can get much larger, making code easily readable to the person working at Google but not the person working at Microsoft. Typical standards for different programming languages can also be wildly different.
What this means is that communicating problem-solving knowledge in computer science can become difficult if either party isn’t aware of the particular standards of communication in that programming language and at that company.
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