Herb Sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu, «C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices»

Good coding standards can offer many interrelated advantages:

Improved code quality: Encouraging developers to do the right things in a consistent way directly works to improve software quality and maintainability.
Improved development speed: Developers don't need to always make decisions starting from first principles.
Better teamwork: They help reduce needless debates on inconsequential issues and make it easier for teammates to read and maintain each other's code.
Uniformity in the right dimension: This frees developers to be creative in directions that matter.
Under stress and time pressure, people do what they've been trained to do. They fall back on habit. That's why ER units in hospitals employ experienced, trained personnel; even knowledgeable beginners would panic.

As software developers, we routinely face enormous pressure to deliver tomorrow's software yesterday. Under schedule pressure, we do what we are trained to do and are used to doing. Sloppy programmers who in normal times don't know good practices of software engineering (or aren't used to applying them) will write even sloppier and buggier code when pressure is on. Conversely, programmers who form good habits and practice them regularly will keep themselves organized and deliver quality code, fast.

The coding standards introduced by this book are a collection of guidelines for writing high-quality C++ code. They are the distilled conclusions of a rich collective experience of the C++ community. Much of this body of knowledge has only been available in bits and pieces spread throughout books, or as word-of-mouth wisdom. This book's intent is to collect that knowledge into a collection of rules that is terse, justified, and easy to understand and follow.

Of course, one can write bad code even with the best coding standards. The same is true of any language, process, or methodology. A good set of coding standards fosters good habits and discipline that transcend mere rules. That foundation, once acquired, opens the door to higher levels. There's no shortcut; you have to develop vocabulary and grammar before writing poetry. We just hope to make that easier.

We address this book to C++ programmers of all levels:

If you are an apprentice programmer, we hope you will find the rules and their rationale helpful in understanding what styles and idioms C++ supports most naturally. We provide a concise rationale and discussion for each rule and guideline to encourage you to rely on understanding, not just rote memorization.

For the intermediate or advanced programmer, we have worked hard to provide a detailed list of precise references for each rule. This way, you can do further research into the rule's roots in C++'s type system, grammar, and object model. At any rate, it is very likely that you work in a team on a complex project. Here is where coding standards really pay off-you can use them to bring the team to a common level and provide a basis for code reviews.

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Herb Sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu, «C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices»

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