Cod­ing Stan­dards

Cod­ing Stan­dards are a set of guide­lines for cre­at­ing pro­gram source code of a cer­tain appli­ca­tion , frame­work or other soft­ware devel­op­ment pro­ject. They define the pro­gram­ming style, prac­tices and meth­ods for the source code.

Cod­ing stan­dards usu­ally cover file orga­ni­za­tion, inden­ta­tion, source code com­ments, dec­la­ra­tions, state­ments, usage of white spaces, nam­ing con­ven­tions, and gen­eral pro­gram­ming prac­tices.

There is noth­ing worse than inher­it­ing an appli­ca­tion or need­ing to make changes to code that requires a lot of time and energy to deci­pher, or that doesn't make its pur­pose or inten­tions clear.

Cod­ing stan­dards make sure that a soft­ware is coded and anno­tated in a con­sis­tent com­mon style.

By fol­low­ing these stan­dards, soft­ware engi­neers improve the read­abil­ity of their source code. Instead of each devel­oper cod­ing in their own pre­ferred style, they will write all code to the guide­lines out­lined in the cod­ing stan­dards .

Not only does it make the source code eas­ier to under­stand, it also ensures that any devel­oper who looks at the code will know what to expect through­out the entire appli­ca­tion . This makes code reviews, bug fix­ing, later main­te­nance and exten­sion of the code eas­ier and less time con­sum­ing.