Programming is not a dry mechanical process, but a form of art. Well written code has an aesthetic appeal while poor form can make other programmers and instructors cringe. Programming assignments will be graded based on style and correctness. Good programming practices usually include many of the following principles:

General Programming Style

• A comment at the top of the program that includes
  • Program authors
  • Date or Dates
  • A brief description of what the program does
  A very specific format will be required for CS303E Assignments. Please see the assignments page.
• Concise comments that summarize major sections of your code
• Meaningful variable and function names
• Function comments that include: (1) description of what function does; (2) description of input values (parameter values); (3) description of return value(s)
• Well organized code
• White space or comments to improve legibility
• Avoidance of large blocks of copy-pasted code

Specific Guidelines

• Indentation: Use 4 spaces per indentation level, or some consistent number of spaces. Two spaces is probably not enough, more than 6 is probably too many.
  
• Tabs or Spaces: Never, ever, mix tabs and spaces.
  
• Limit lines to 79 characters. This avoids line wrapping. Use a line continuation character if necessary.
• Blank lines: Use blank lines before and after a function definition, and to separate segments of code. Blank lines should be used to increase readability of your code. Do not separate every two statements by a blank line. 
• Whitespace:
  
• Do not use extra whitespace inside brackets and braces:
• Do this: myFunction(a[2], {1, 2})
• Not this: myFunction(  a[  2 ],   {  1,   2})
• In a function call, do not separate the function name and its argument list by whitespace:
• Do this: myFunction(1)
• Not this: myFunction  (1)
• Use a blank space before and after the = sign in an assignment statement: i = i+1
• Do not include multiple statements on the same line. This reduces readability.
• Separate an in-line comment from the statement by at least 2 blank spaces:
• i = i+1   # add 1 to i
•  Don't do this: i = i+1#add 1 to i

• Imports should always be on separate lines. 

• Use a couple of comments before a function or module to briefly describe what the function (or module) does. Likewise, before a chunk of related statements, include comments that describe briefly what the chunk does.
  
• Don't use too many in-line comments. If you feel a need for them, you probably aren't using enough comments at the beginning of functions and complicated code segments.
  

• In CS303E, we will use different naming styles, depending on what we are naming: a variable, a function, or a class. We will talk more about these in class. Use the convention that we discuss in lecture.
  There are some common naming conventions:
• concatenated nouns, in which the first noun starts with a lowercase letter, and the other nouns start with an uppercase letter
• Identifiers that use this convention: myLastName, myFavoriteHorrorMovie, firstNumber
• Uppercase words separated by underscores - typically used for constants
  
• Identifiers using this convention: NUMBER_OF_LEGS, SIDES_OF_POLYGON
• concatenated letters that begin with capitals
• Identifiers using this convention: SockDrawer, FavoriteNumber
• Use meaningful names. Except for a loop index, it's rarely a good idea to have a variable i or a variable x. An identifier's name should give the reader a clue about what it represents.