NuSpatial Style Guides
Motivation
Coding style is important. A clean, consistent style leads to code that is more readable, debuggable, and maintainable. We strive to write elegant code that will not only perform its desired function today, but will also live on, to be re-used and improved by other developers for many years to come.
To this end, we prescribe (and proscribe) a variety of practices. Our goal is to encourage agile but reasoned development of code that can be easily understood by others.
These are guidelines, not rules. With very few exceptions, this document does not completely ban any particular pattern or feature, but rather describes best practice, to be used in the large majority of cases. When deviating from the guidelines given here, just be sure to consider your options carefully, and to document your reasoning, in the code.
Above all else, be consistent. Follow this guide whenever possible, but if you are editing a package written by someone else, follow the existing stylistic conventions in that package (unless you are retrofitting the whole package to follow this guide, for which you deserve an award).