Coding Style Guidelines

These are general guidelines for SharpOS code.

• Follow the Microsoft design guidelines for the .NET Framework.
• Follow the Mono coding guidelines.
• Follow good object oriented practices:
  • Hide implementation details.
  • Abstract common concepts into base classes.
  • Keep coupling to a minimum: a class may depend on several basic types, but should depend on few of its peers.
  • Keep cohesion to a maximum: a class should be focused on a single concept, embodied in the class's name, and should depend on as little data as possible to accomplish its goals.
  • Remember that there are several ways to tie two classes together, such as inheritance, aggregation, and event handling.
  • Always aim for reusability. The more easily a class can be lifted from its current project and used in another project, the more reusable it is. A good example is that of a file system: A FileSystemDriver that depends on peer drivers and a static I/O scheduler would be difficult to reuse. A FileSystem that is self-contained and depends on an abstract scheduler supplied in its constructor is easy to reuse.
  • Strike a balance between virtual/abstract methods and final methods. Sealed types and final methods are fast, but cannot be overridden. Virtual methods are slower, but can be overridden.
• Avoid the singleton pattern. Singleton patterns are used where there should be only one instance of a type in an AppDomain. This is rarely ever the case; in fact, it's pretty much just another way of making a global variable, and it makes unit testing hard.
• Try to type variables and field names in full; avoid abbreviation. Abbreviation makes code harder to read.
• Make liberal use of named constants, where it makes sense to do so.