Coding Standards

Coding Standards

Good software development companies usually outline coding standards to follow a well-defined and consistent coding style.

The majority of software development organizations develop their coding standards, requiring their engineers to follow precisely.

In an organization, programmers are required to follow a standard style of coding for the following reasons:

The codes written by diverse programmers look uniform when written according to a coding standard.

• Ensures uniformity between codes written by different programmers.
• Reusable code can be developed.
• It is easier to identify errors.
• Keeps code simple, readable, and maintainable.
• Improves programming efficiency and speeds up development.

List of Coding Standards

Coding standards are generally applicable to all developers and organizations.

Here are a few examples:

1. Rules for limiting the use of globals: It means that within coding standards, it is defined which data type should be global and which should not be.
    
2. Naming conventions: A naming convention will be defined for all sorts of entities or variables within the software. This will provide consistency in the structure of the names. This is because local variables must be written in the Camelcase, global variables should start in capitals, and constants must be named in capital letters consistently.
    
3. Contents of the header for modules: Each module has a header that contains data that must follow a specific format. For example:
   → The name of the module
   → Date of creation
   → Date of approval
   → Developer's or author's name
   → Synopsis
   → Description of the module
   → Description of the variables
   → Functions defined in the module, etc.
    
4. Error return conventions and exception handling mechanisms: When a function encounters an error, the function may return 0 or 1. This way, errors are handled uniformly throughout an organization.      

Coding Guidelines

Here are some Coding Guidelines, that will help to ensure the safety, security and reliability of your applications:

1. Coding Style
   Code in an understandable manner and not too cleverly. Simple coding is best. There are quite a few inexperienced programmers who take pleasure in writing complex or unclear code.
    
2. Avoid obscure side effects
   If we modify a global variable and then perform any Input-output operations or pass arguments by reference, then our global variable must not get changed. Therefore, it is difficult to understand the code when a global variable is instantly changed in a function call or when some file input-output is performed.
    
3. Using identifiers
   Use different identifiers for different purposes. Each identifier must have a unique name within the module to avoid ambiguity. It is recommended that each variable has a descriptive name that explains its function. It is possible to cause confusion and difficulty for someone trying to read and understand the code when a variable is being used for multiple purposes simultaneously.
    
4. Comments
   When you write your code, comment it so that when anyone reads it, it becomes crystal clear.
    
5. Length of function
   If you write too many lines of code for a function, consider writing another one for it. If it has more than ten lines, you will understand it easily. However, the number of Bugs will increase as well.
    
6. Function calls that break the control flow of statements
   It is best not to use jumps, gotos, and function calls unnecessarily as reloading the statement, executing it, and returning to the previous calling function happens at the cost of extra time for the processor.

FAQs

1. Why is CamelCase used?
   With CamelCase, you can create a more meaningful name in any computer system that requires the letters in a name to be contiguous (without spaces) without violating the naming restriction.
    
2. How often should we update Coding Standards?
   It may not be a good idea to update a coding standard continually. Long lifecycles are especially prevalent in safety-critical applications. The language constructs used by these industries have not yet proved to be reliable, thus causing them to be cautious.
    
3. Why are Coding Standards important?
   Coding standards have the goal of educating programmers. Supplementary materials can assist in that process. Programmers can use supporting materials to learn about the program's background or extra information.
    
4. What are the benefits of coding standards?
   Software developers consider coding standards necessary for many reasons: Maintaining software consumes 40 - 80% of its overall cost. Original authors rarely support their software completely. The purpose of coding standards is to make the software more readable by allowing developers to comprehend code more quickly.

Key Takeaways

This article is about Coding and Coding Standards, and we have seen different kinds of Coding Standards and Coding Guidelines used in Software development.

We hope that this blog has helped you enhance your knowledge regarding coding standards and if you would like to learn more, check out our articles on link. Do upvote our blog to help other ninjas grow.

Happy Coding!