coding standards

Coding standards include the following:

• indent style
• naming conventions for source files, function and variable names, etc.
• comments
• programming language specific rules

Coding standards may be very annoying when they differ from your preferences and force you to write your code in a way you think is inferior, but people who aren't terminally egocentric will quickly realize that it's a lot better than getting acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of all the other coders on the team and, even worse, have source files with mixed coding styles.

Some things to remember about Coding Standards.

• Coding standards are not there to annoy you (even though some standards may seem to serve no other obvious purpose).
• Coding standards allow groups of people to write uniform pieces of code, following the same rules. This allows people who read the code to understand it more easily no matter who wrote it.
• Coding standards mean that you can enforce good (although sometimes bad) coding habits, meaning better, more maintainable code.
• If you get put on a project to maintain a piece of incredibly badly written code with no standards document, no matter how tempting it is, keep to the same style of coding as the original author. After a time, you will not regret it because you will still be able to read the code instead of having to switch between 2 (or possibly more) styles.