Cross-Language coding standards?

Question

I'm looking for advice as to coding conventions. The primary languages I use, in order of frequency are C#, JavaScript, and ActionScript. They are all ECMA-based languages, so for the most part, the syntax is interchangeable. What I would like to do is standardize the way I write code.

I looked around for documents on coding standards and found some, by various authors including Microsoft, Adobe, Doug Crockford, and the authors of various books I own. Much of the individual standards are identical. For example, do not use capitalization to differentiate between object identifiers. Okay, sounds good.

However, they are different in some ways, most notably to me in the naming conventions. For example, using underscores in naming private properties, or camel casing vs Pascal casing for method names.

The C# advice tends to differ more between the others than ActionScript and JavaScript do with each other, which makes it more difficult for me since it is a greater number of languages vs a greater amount of code written. There is also the issue of automatic formatting in the IDE (e.g. the placement of opening braces in functions in JavaScript vs C#).

Any advice as to how you might have approached this problem? Any big pitfalls I'm not seeing? I realize I may be being pedantic, and that I'm lucky enough to work in an environment where I don't have to conform to someone else's standard. I hope to gain some increase in productivity and more readable code. Thanks.

Answer 1

I would stick to the standards proposed by the communities or creators of the languages instead of trying to create one standard that crosses boundaries. Doing otherwise tends to torque off developers that are passionate about and active in the communities surrounding the language.

We tried to do that at one of my employers with Delphi and C#, and no one was happy.

Answer 2

Idioms that make sense in C# aren't necessarily going to make sense in Javascript (and vice-versa), despite the fact that both use pointy braces and semicolons.

We use different coding styles - for the most part, standard Microsoft style for C# and for the most part, standard jQuery style for Javascript. It can be a bit strange-looking (the disjoint of Pascal versus camel case means that you have some C# objects that have "improper" casing because they're pretty much just there as JSON containers), but I wouldn't try to shoehorn what are two discrete languages into a single grammar.

Answer 3

I'm lucky enough to work in an environment where I don't have to conform to someone else's standard

Personally I don't follow the Microsoft standard for C#: instead, all my method names and property names use camelCase (though my types still use UpperCase). And, I decorate my member data (so that it can't be confused with local variables, properties, and/or parameters).

I don't see why it's necessary to follow Microsoft's naming conventions; IMO it's even occasionally a good thing not to: when I subclass a Microsoft type, the case (e.g. 'add') distinguishes my methods from Microsoft's methods (e.g. 'Add') in the underlying base class.

Also when I'm writing C++, I don't follow the same naming conventions as the standard library authors (who use lower_case for their types whereas I use UpperCase).

It is true however that other developers may/do not like it; for example, someone commented on some example C# code that I posted in some answer here on SO, to criticise it not for its content but for its naming convention.

Answer 4

We use this document. I understand that lots of people use it. It is kind of an industry standard: http://www.idesign.net/idesign/download/IDesign%20CSharp%20Coding%20Standard.zip.

Works for many languages, but it is written specifically for C#.

Answer 5

This is a matter of preference really, because that's just what coding standards are: standards. There is no obvious right or wrong here, enforcing every language's community standards has a lot going for it until you are working in 5 different languages frequently which all have subtle differences. You will not be able to keep up and start following neither standard.

What I have done before is use the same standard for languages in the same ballpark (PHP, Java, Ruby), and then some specific ones if it was absolutely impractical to use that same set of standards, and the code looks different enough for your brain to also make the switch (for BASH scripts for instance).

But really it's what you (and the rest of your team) agrees upon. You don't gain productivity from a specific set of coding standards, you gain productivity by having the same standards as the people you work with. If you want to go full out hungarian camel case with an underscore on top: more power to you, just make sure the entire team does it ;)