Extreme Coding Standards

I've heard a bunch of times that devolopers on an XP project all adhere to the same coding standards. Are they the same for every project? Is there a core set? How are/were they developed? I'm surprised that I couldn't find this elsewhere on Wiki did I miss it? -- PhilGoodwin

I have only seen KentBeck's SmalltalkBestPracticePatterns used. I suspect it may go without saying, at least on a Smalltalk project.

I have now come to understand that an ExtremeTeam develops its standards as it goes along. They are enforced by peer pressure and are somewhat malleable because they can change as the team learns more. -- PhilGoodwin

We have a set of standards that are available on the web (http://www.qlue.com/docs/codingstds). We use them ourselves and a number of other organizations use them. As Phil says, any good coding standard must be malleable and must evolve to be useful. We provide for that in our standards, by explicitly stating the intention in the Introduction, by providing some ground rules for dealing with exceptions/changes, by providing for a hierarchy of "standards" (e.g.: General-> Language Specific-> Project Specific). We also try to make our standards less a list of rules and more a set of conventions and best practices with explanations so that a programmer can determine the relative importance of breaking a rule in a particular situation in the interests of clarity, performance, local convention, or whatever. -- EricVought