Programming Guidelines:

One of the purposes of this course is to prepare you for a programming job in the real world. With that in mind, I expect very professional code from you.

Professional environments often have their own company policies for capitalization and naming conventions, and this standardization greatly contributes to code that is quickly understandable for multiple programmers. While practices may vary, I expect you to follow these guidelines for your code in this course:

Naming Conventions:

• While Visual C# is case-sensitive, Visual Basic is not, and conceivably your work could be applicable to both. Therefore use capital letters where appropriate, but do not create two names which differ only by uppercase and lowercase letters. (ie: Dog and dog).
• Variable and method names should start with a lowercase letter.
• According to the CLC: Common language Specification, no underscores or hyphens should be used in your names. For multiple-word names, use camelCase: myVariable.
• Method names should start with a verb, so we are aware that they perform actions. For instance, a method name called displayText() is much more descriptive than the same method if just called text().
• Class names start with an uppercase letter: MyClass. (this is also called PascalCase).

Formatting:

• Although C# is not sensitive to white space, you should properly indent your work. I do not care if you use tabs or a certain number of spaces, but your indentation method should be uniform and clearly visible.
• Do not allow your lines to wrap; continue long commands on the next line.
• Do not be afraid of white space. Using blank lines appropriately in your code, like between function declarations, only increases the readability.

Commenting:

• Comment your code. Seriously. As a guideline, 10% of your lines should be comments or contain comments.
• However, your comments should be useful:
• “More isn't always better. If you pour comments over your badly written code like ketchup over a lousy steak, you will have created a mess even more hard to decipher. [Likewise, no amount of ketchup and/or steak sauce is going to make that steak any better. ]” - Kurt Eiselt
• Especially, document the purpose of every method above its definition.