Project-Specific Coding Guidelines

I’m about to embark on the development of a distributed, scalable, data-centric, real-time, sensor system. Since some technical risks are at this point disturbingly high, especially meeting CPU loading and latency requirements, a team of three of us (two software engineers and one system engineer) are going to prototype several CPU-intensive system functions.

Assuming that our prototyping effort proves that our proposed application layer functional architecture is feasible, a much larger team will be applied to the effort in an attempt to meet schedule. In order to promote consistency across the code base, facilitate on-boarding of new team members, and lower long term maintenance costs, I’m proposing the following 15 design and C++ coding guidelines:

1. Minimize macro usage.
2. Use STL containers instead of homegrown ones.
3. No unessential 3rd party libraries, with the exception of Boost.
4. Strive for a clear and intuitive namespace-to-directory mapping.
5. Use a consistent, uniform, communication scheme between application processes. Deviations must be justified.
6. Use the same threading library (Boost) when multi-threading is needed within a process.
7. Design a little, code a little, unit test a little, integrate a little, document a little. Repeat.
8. Avoid casting. When casting is unavoidable, use the C++ cast operators so that the cast hacks stick out like a sore thumb.
9. No naked pointers when heap memory is required. Use C++ auto and Boost smart pointers.
10. Strive for pure layering. Document all non-adjacent layer interface breaches and wrap all forays into OS-specific functionality.
11. Strive for < 100 lines of code per function member.
12. Strive for < 4 nested if-then-else code sections and inheritance tree depths.
13. Minimize “using” directives, liberally employ “using” declarations to keep verbosity low.
14. Run the code through a static code analyzer frequently.
15. Strive for zero compiler warnings.

Notice that the list is short, (maybe) memorize-able, and (maybe) enforceable. It’s an attempt to avoid imposing a 100 page tome of rules that nobody will read, let alone use or enforce. What do you think? What is YOUR list of 15?