Best Coding Practices
From Coder Merlin
Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...
— Merlin, The Coder
Best Practice
π #249
Flowcharts are your friend
Best Practice
π #657
Use appropriate capitalization
- Names of types and protocols are UpperCamelCase (Pascal case)
- Everything else is lowerCamelCase
Best Practice
π #359
Clarity is more important than brevity
Best Practice
π #563
Preconditions are your friend
- Include sufficient information for the message to be useful
Best Practice
π #174
Great functions exhibit these three vital properties:
- Easy to read and comprehend
- Easy to debug
- Easy to modify to solve a variation of the original task
Best Practice
π #057
No global variables
- Global variables are evil
Best Practice
π #207
Always use appropriate and descriptive variable names
- nouns are usually most appropriate
Best Practice
π #208
Always use appropriate and descriptive function names
- verbs are usually most appropriate
Best Practice
π #394
Orderly exits from functions
- In general, avoid mid-function exits
Best Practice
π #444
Avoid repetition
- DRY: Do Not Repeat Yourself
- DIE: Duplication is Evil
Best Practice
π #502
Scope appropriately
- Scope is no wider than absolutely necessary
Best Practice
π #523
Loop appropriately
- Correct loop type
- In general, avoid mid-loop exits
Best Practice
π #029
Always use appropriate indentation
- Helpful whitespace
- Appropriate placement of closing braces and parentheses
Best Practice
π #074
Use comments to advantage others
- Deliberate and helpful comments
- Avoid "obvious" comments
Best Practice
π #617
Nest appropriately
- Avoid deep nesting
- Avoid inappropriate nesting of functions
- Indent correctly according to nested level
Best Practice
π #831
Limit line length
Best Practice
π #907
Organize files appropriately
- Generally one class per file
Best Practice
π #947
Hardcode only when there is no other choice
- All other values should be:
- calculated, or
- retrieved from configuration
Exercises[edit]
Exercises
- M1297-28 Complete Merlin Mission Manager Mission M1297-28.
References[edit]
- API Design Guidelines (Swift Documentation)
- API Style Guidelines (Google Documentation)