Questions tagged [coding-style]

**DO NOT USE! This tag refers to an entirely opinionated subject and is therefore no longer on-topic.** Questions that follow coding style and conventions.

DO NOT USE! This tag refers to an entirely opinionated subject and is therefore no longer on-topic.

Questions that follow coding style and conventions.

Coding-style or Programming style is a set of rules or guidelines used when writing the source code for a computer program. It is often claimed that following a particular programming style will help programmers to read and understand source code conforming to the style, and help to avoid introducing errors.

Questions relating to coding style: stylistic issues like braces and indentation or larger issues like refactoring, size of functions, and so forth.

Where can I ask these questions?

  • Process-level questions about coding conventions or style guides may be on-topic for Software Engineering. That also covers design-level questions

  • If you want to improve your style, you can ask for a Code Review.

  • Questions that ask for the “best style” or for advice in a specific situation are too subjective and/or too broad.

7804 questions
164
votes
15 answers

How many constructor arguments is too many?

Let's say you have a class called Customer, which contains the following fields: UserName Email First Name Last Name Let's also say that according to your business logic, all Customer objects must have these four properties defined. Now, we can do…
Kevin Pang
  • 41,172
  • 38
  • 121
  • 173
161
votes
12 answers

A free tool to check C/C++ source code against a set of coding standards?

It looks quite easy to find such a tool for Java (Checkstyle, JCSC), but I can't seem to find one for C/C++. I am not looking for a lint-like static code analyzer, I only would like to check against coding standards like variable naming,…
Drealmer
  • 5,578
  • 3
  • 30
  • 37
161
votes
6 answers

Should I use `import os.path` or `import os`?

According to the official documentation, os.path is a module. Thus, what is the preferred way of importing it? # Should I always import it explicitly? import os.path Or... # Is importing os enough? import os Please DON'T answer "importing os works…
Denilson Sá Maia
  • 47,466
  • 33
  • 109
  • 111
161
votes
10 answers

Does