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Like this article? We recommend
Summary
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Summary
This little look at coding styles produces five rules that you should keep in mind when you define your conventions:
- Always know why you are adding a rule.
- Aim to reduce the amount of code someone needs to read understand the flow in a method or function.
- Follow natural language rules where available.
- Think about the tools your developers will be using.
- Aim to make the code as self-documenting as possible.
- Typos should produce code that does the right thing anyway or which doesn't compile.
Above all, be consistent. The more self-consistent a set of style guidelines is, the more likely you are to get people to follow it.
The first of these rules is a meta-rule. The others define objectives, more than strategies. When you create a rule in your style guidelines, you should be able to explain exactly why it helps obtain one of the objectives. If you can't, then you are guilty of cargo cultism, a very common affliction when defining coding rules, where people force everyone to use the same bad ideas that they have been using, just because they are familiar.
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