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Code style guide

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Michal Hanajik edited this page Oct 7, 2018 · 16 revisions

Table of contents

General rules

  • Before you start to work on a code example, look at other code examples in your language, if possible.
  • Space things out to improve readability. Code needs room to breath.
    • x = 3; instead of x=3;
    • int myFunction(int a, int b, int c) instead of int myFunction(int a,int b,int c){
    • for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) { instead of for(int i=0;i<n;i++){
  • Always go for readability over performance or compactness. Don't use clever shortcuts if you could express something in ways that would be easier to understand.
  • You can look up indentation rules for most languages in .editorconfig if they're not mentioned here.
  • If something is not mentioned here, stick to the best practices or a common style guide for your language.

JavaScript

General

Try to write modern JavaScript code. The code examples in the Arcane Algorithm Archive don't need backwards compatibility for older browsers. Use const, let, promises, for..of, higher-level array methods and everything that you can think of. Don't hold yourself back because your code might not run in Internet Explorer 9.

Indentation

Always indent your JavaScript code with 2 spaces. The same goes for JSON.

Curly braces

Put curly braces for functions/methods and control structures on the same line.

Variable declarations

Always declare variables as const, unless you have to modify them, in which case you should declare them as let. There is no good reason to use var.

Naming conventions

Name your functions, methods, variables and properties in camelCase. Name your classes in PascalCase.

Strings

Surround strings with double quotes (").

Node or browser?

Write code that works in both, especially in Node. Use console.log() for output instead of window.alert() or modifying the DOM of a web page.

PHP

General

Coding standard is PSR-2.

Indentation

Always indent your PHP code with 4 spaces.

Naming conventions

Name all functions which are defined outside of classes in snake_case style. Reason for that is keep them consistent with naming of PHP core functions. Variables on the other hand should always be in camelCase format.

Braces

While using braces as PSR-2 requires, it's necessary to place them on new line.

Python

The coding standard is PEP 8.

Golang

Golang has a great tool called goimports which helps you a great deal in writing consistent and good looking code.

The Go team also released a style guide. In addition to that they collected the most frequent style comments in code reviews

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