From long time I wanted to write some of the standard programming practices that I have come across during my various project developments. But partly due to my work load and partly my laziness I wasn't able to do. But now I have started to find some time and share these. There is big difference between a "working code" and an "efficient code". Many times due to various reasons we developers ( including myself :) ) just write some code that fulfills the need and not not care about anything else. Many times even following these standards can be quite painstaking job for many as usually it takes more time. But in hindsight, its better to take more time at first place itself rather then Since there are many points which we need to take care while developing efficient code, so I have decided to divide this article in many parts. So below is some basic stuff which we need to take care during development:

Naming Conventions and Standards

Naming conventions are backbone of writing good code. More you follow naming conventions, easier it becomes for someone else to understand your code. So below are some points related to same:

• Pascal casing: the first character of all words is upper case and the other characters are lower case. Use this for giving file names and class names. In some languages like C#, even method names are given in this.
• Camel casing: the first character of all words, except the first word, is upper case and other characters are lower case. This should be used for variable and method names.
• In earlier times people used underscores ( _ )  as word separator in variable and function names. However, now a days this practice is discouraged. Also, avoid using hungarian notation while variable/method naming. But basically whatever casing you are using in your application, please make it uniform across the application.
• Do not use abbreviations. Use name, address, salary etc. instead of nam, addr, sal.
• Do not use single character variable names like i, n, x, etc. Use names like index and temp. One exception in this case would be variables used for iterations in loops i.e. you can use name as i,j,k inside for loop for iterations.
• Namespace names should follow the standard pattern like <company name>.<product name>.<top level module>.<bottom level module> .
• File name should match with class name if possible. For example, for the class HelloWorld, the file name should be HelloWorld.java .
• Indentation and spacing: use TAB for indentation. Do not use spaces.
• Comments should be in the same level as the code. Curly braces ( {} ) should be in the same level as the code outside the braces. Use one blank line to separate logical groups of code.
• There should be one and only one single blank line between each method inside the class. The curly braces should be on a separate line and not in the same line as if, for, etc. 
• Use a single space before and after each operator and brackets.

 Below is an example of code following above mentioned conventions:

public class HelloWorld 

{

 bool SayHello ( string name )

  {

    string fullMessage = "Hello " + name;

    DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now;

    string message = fullMessage + ", the time is : " + currentTime.ToShortTimeString();

    MessageBox.Show ( message );

    if ( ... )

     {

       // Do something

      // ...

      return false;

     }

    return true;

 }

}