The Need for Standards
By taking the time up front, you'll save time in the long run.
At RIT, I am often forced to work on applications built by other developers who have come before me. And being a university, there is typically a three or four year turn around on developers. When this is the case, you are bound to get a variety of coding styles throughout all of your sites and applications.
The most recent application I’ve had to work on was the same old story. The application is nothing overly complicated, just simple database manipulation and queries. When looking to the code, it was rather disjointed to my eyes. And of course, there were no comments of any kind. It is not unexpected at this point, but I think these development issues can be easily solved and resolved in a development team.
A coding standard would solve the issue of development as a team. It is common to see the variety of styles based on a programmers background and preferences. Don’t let your development wreak havoc on others in your team. By taking the time up front, you’ll save time in the long run.