Programming Style Guidelines

Visual Basic's ease of use can mask the need for a consistent programming style, but that need grows with the size of the programs you create. It's easy to debug a 100-line program, harder at 1000 lines, and almost impossible at 10,000 lines unless you've used some system of organization. The need for rules grows further when more than one person is writing the code or when the project needs to be maintained over long periods of time.

The goal of programming style is consistency and clarity. Good programming style will reduce the possibility of bugs and shorten the time it takes to read and understand code. Programming style guidelines must address naming, type checking, scope, and comments. Remember the following guidelines:

• Name items descriptively.

• Always use the Option Explicit statement.

• Use the most appropriate data type for each variable and parameter.

• Limit scope by using property procedures instead of global data.

• Write comments while you create code.

These rules bear repeating until they become so automatic that you don't have to think about them. This chapter expands on these guidelines and provides specific details.