Blog - Coding Style Conventions
I write a lot of code, and here are a few little stylistic things I try to always do now.
1) Mandatory comment when passing boolean flags or weird random args: I learned this one when interning at Facebook. What's the third arg here?
processDatabase(server, "Users", true);
No more mystery flags! You must comment it so I know what the heck I'm passing and what it means.
processDatabase(server, "Users", /*overwrite*/ true);
2) Mandatory comment on an empty block: Sometimes I have an empty block or empty loop or whatever. But here's one in my code; did I mean to do that? Is it a bug? Just comment it and be sure. Got this one from Stanford Prof. Eric Roberts.
// should this ctor be empty?? (bad)
public FluxCapacitor() {
}
// this one is better
public FluxCapacitor() {
// empty
}
3) Author/version comments on files: It seems like a simple/obvious thing, but just tagging my files with my name and when I last modified them has helped me a lot with "is this the newest copy of this file?" issues. I also put in what I changed between each version.
/** * FluxCapacitor.java * ........ (description) * @author Marty Stepp * @version 2015/04/15 * - fixed bug with null pointer in query function * - alphabetized function names * 2015/01/29 * - added getRandomBlerg() method * ... */
4) Two-letter for-loop counter variable names:
It's a nightmare to search for "int i" in your code.
How about two letters?
for (int ii = 0; ii < 10; ii++) {
for (int jj = 0; jj < ii; jj++) {
...
}
}
What are some little style rules that you love to follow in your own code?
