Exercises and Discussion Topics

  1. Identify the coding standards that apply in your organization. In the form of a table, compare their coverage against two other commonly used standards.
  2. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of defining and declaring code elements in a strictly prescribed order. How do modern integrated development environments affect your view?
  3. Devise a guideline that prescribes under what circumstances the formatting of an imported piece of code should be changed to conform to the local coding standards. Take into account code quality, readability, maintenance, revision control, and future integration issues.
  4. Some argue that the Hungarian naming conventions duplicate work that is performed by a type checking compiler. Discuss.
  5. Create an itemized list of programming practices that can help code readability. Try, where possible, to reference existing examples.
  6. Identify the process standards that apply in your organization. Explain what software elements (files, directories) have to be examined in order to verify the conformance of a system against those standards.