What Are Coding Rules and Guidelines?
Coding rules and guidelines ensure that software is:
- Safe: It can be used without causing harm.
- Secure: It can’t be hacked.
- Reliable: It functions as it should, every time.
- Testable: It can be tested at the code level.
- Maintainable: It can be maintained, even as your codebase grows.
- Portable: It works the same in every environment.
Why Apply Coding Standard?
There are four key benefits of using coding standards:
- Reduce Code Bugs
- Improve Code Readability
- Ease Code Review process
- Easy to Maintain
- Cost Efficient
General Principles
- Explicit is better than implicit.
- Be consistent.
- It is easier to prevent a bug than to find it and fix it.
- Write as if you are writing for someone else to use and maintain code.
- Use C99.
- Avoid proprietary compiler language keyword extensions.
- Avoid complicated statements.
- Use 4 spaces per indent level.