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Structured programming skills are a must for anyone writing computer software. This paper will present to the reader the concept of the style guide as a tool for insuring structured programming skills are developed by both novice and experienced programmers.
A style guide is normally a written document, either hard copy or on-line, that provides rules for formatting, documenting, variable naming and other important skills that are required for insuring written code is readable, reusable and maintainable. One style guide is not suitable for all programming languages and therefore each language will normally have it’s own style guide covering a standard set of topics.
Topics of the paper are a detailed description of a style guide, how to develop a sound style guide, introduction of the style guide concepts through visual examples and methods of enforcement in the class room environment.
I. Introduction
In this age where software is embedded in practically every consumer product sold, topics such as software reusability and maintainability are on the minds of all software managers. As engineers, our graduates can almost be guaranteed that they will be expected to develop code at some time in their career. It is almost an even greater certainty that the code they develop will be used again or modified at a later date. It has been shown that 40 to 60% of all code is reusable from one application to another, 60% of the design and code in all business applications is reusable, 75% of the program functionality is common to more than one program, and only 15% of the code is unique to a specific application1.
Reuse and maintenance of code typically means code modification. The modification may or may not be minor in scope. But with today’s dynamic employment market, we can expect that the individual modifying the code did not originally write the code and will therefore have to rediscover the architecture of the system2. With an expected shortfall of 1 million software engineers in the year 20003, we can expect more and more of our graduates to be tasked with the job or developing original code and modifying existing code. It is therefore important that we provide them with the guidance from industry as to what is considered to be acceptable design practices for software. A common tool used in industry, and sometimes in academia is the style guide.