You should be aware there are standard conventions that may specify or guide you in many if not all of the following areas:
- directory and file organization
- use of indentation
- how to comments
- declaration preferred style
- statement style
- the use of white space
- naming guidelines/rules
- best practice in other areas
At the end of this short article I provide a list of style/convention guides for the most popular languages.
A language may have a common style or convention guide for anyone using the language such as Microsoft C#. When you work at a specific company, they may have a company-wide style guide. If you work on a team or on a Open Source project, they may have a style guide that you must follow.
There are automated tools to warn of not following a style that is recommended usually called a linter. Lint was the name of a program that would go through your C code and identify problems before you compiled, linked, and ran it. It was a static checker that would run after editing your code and before compiling. Some linters also check that the code follows certain style/conventions.
Good programming style creates easier to understand programs with consistent style and code patterns and names. This results in less bugs and higher productivity.
A recommendation for any programmer:
A great reference for many software writing techniques that make a difference is the book: Code Complete 2 written by Steve McConnell . I had been programming decades and then discovered this book, it was a book I wish I had when I was starting to program. It would have saved me many hard lessons. I recommend it to anyone getting serious about programming.
I recommend that you read the style guides for the language you are using, and also check out some other languages.
The Style/Guide List:
| Language | Guides |
|---|---|
| C | GNU, Linux, WikiBook, Malcolm Inglis, Collection of C/C++ |
| C++ | Google, by Bjarne Stroustrup |
| Python: | PEP8 , Summary PEP8, Google |
| Java: | Google, Historic Oracle(1999), Historic Oracle(1997 pdf), Combined Google/Oracle |
| Ruby: | bbatsov community guide, rails, Airbnb, Shopify |
| C# | Microsoft, raywenderlich.com, Dennis Doomen |
| JavaScript | Google, JQuery.org, Airbnb, W3Schools |
| PHP: | PHP Standard Recommendation (PSR), php-fig, pear standard, Goggle |
| SQL: | top google search, Drupal |
| Swift: | Swift.org, raywenderlich.com |
| R | Google, by Hadley Wickham: |
| Go | 1- How to write Go, 2 -Effective Go |
| Visual Basic | Microsoft msdn, microsoft docs, WikiBook |
| Assembly Language | Recommended by me, Collection |
| CSS | Google, Airbnb |
| Objective-C | Apple, NYTimes, Google |
