Top 7 Coding Standards & Guideline Documents For C#/.NET Developers
The listing is not in any specific order.
1 – IDesign C# Coding Standards
IDesign C# coding standards is a pretty decent and compact (27 pages) Coding Standards Document. It covers a Naming conventions, Best practices and Framework specific guidelines. Example:
The document even has guidelines for project settings, build configuration, versioning etc. Good work by IDesign guys. You can download the document here
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Download IDesign C# Coding Standards
2 – Encodo C# Handbook
Encodo C# handbook is bit more recent, and has 72 pages of guidelines on Structure, Formatting, Naming. It also has a ‘Patterns and Best Practices’ section, which is a must read for any .NET/C# developer.
You can download the Handbook here.
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Encodo C# Handbook Download
3 – Microsoft Framework Design Guidelines
MSDN has a section on guidelines for Designing class libraries, which covers a set of best practices related to Type Design, Member Design etc. You can find it here.
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Read the Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries
4 – Denni’s C# Coding Standards document
Dennis created an
initial version of C# coding standards, which was published as Philips Health Care C# coding standards document (~70 pages). The document categorizes the guidelines to categories like Naming, Exception Handling, Control Flow etc.
* Update: Dennis kindly pointed that the Initial Version I linked here earlier has now been superseded by the Coding Guidelines for C# 3.0 and C# 4.0. Paul Jansen of Tiobe will update his site soon regarding the new version - But in meantime, download the guidelines and some companion documents here:
http://csharpguidelines.codeplex.com/
5 – Microsoft’s All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline
Microsoft’s [url=http://1code.codeplex.com/All In One Code[/url] framework has a Coding Style Guideline document. The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is a free, centralized code sample library provided by the Microsoft Community team. It has typical code samples for all Microsoft development technologies, and a code style guideline document with that. Thanks to Kevin for pointing out this guideline document with All In One Code Framework (See the comments)
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Download All In One Code Framework Guideline Document
6 – Brad’s Quick Post on Microsoft Internal Coding Guidelines
Brad had a post on Microsoft Internal coding standards (I’m not sure whether he still follow that in Google, if at all he uses C# there). It is a short post, and is mainly on Styling and Naming conventions.
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Read Microsoft Internal Coding Guidelines Post
7 – Mike’s C# Coding Style Guide
Mike Kruger (Sharpdevelop) had published a 13 page C# Coding Style guide. Again, the focus is on Casing, Naming conventions, Declaration style etc. A short and simple Style Guide.
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Download C# Coding Style Guide
So, if you are still confused about which document to choose - my recommendation is here for you - Based on your landscape, organizational climate, project and domain, go through these documents and pick the relevant recommendations – to formulate your very own 10 page ‘.NET/C# Coding standards/guidelines’ for your team.
Also, if you think I missed any prominent guideline document, list down the same in the comments section, and I’ll include that in the main post if it is relevant – My initial post was about 6 documents, but I expanded/modified the list later based on some feedback I received.
Happy Coding.
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