Utilizing core programming guidelines

Programming guidelines are much more than a set of conventions to indicate how many spaces to indent or naming conventions for variables, functions, classes, data members, and member functions. A modern programming guideline is a covenant between programmers within an organization to create code adhering to specific standards, with the largest goal to provide robust and easily extensible code by following these common standards. The bottom line is that most of the conventions contained within a programming guideline are simply to make programming in C++ safer.

The consensus of what comprises a C++ programming guideline may vary from organization to organization, but there are many resources available (including from standards committees) to provide examples and direction.

Let’s move forward to examine a sampling of programming guide essentials and then discuss adopting a core set of guidelines, as well as understanding resources widely...