These are the default coding standards for research software projects used by the Centre for Advanced Research Computing at UCL.
They represent our default style and standard choices that our projects should use if there are no other constraints. If you are working with us, we'll probably start using these standards and may point you to this page (👋).
In the best case, this means that there is only one standard to learn per language. We hope this results in:
- 🛠️ a more consistent tooling and setup,
- 😊 less time thinking about style,
- 💪 faster onboarding of staff to new projects, and
- 🚀 faster review of code.
We acknowledge that neutral choices can be arbitrary, but good choices improve readability. As for the arbitrary ones, well, we take the view that we'd rather not expend mental energy thinking about them.
Exceptions to these standards are usually along the lines of "there is already an established local standard". And that's great. If someone has already thought about coding style then the last thing we want to do is waste that effort by needlessly changing to another set of standards.
The UCL-ARC coding standards guidelines by the Centre for Advanced Research Computing, UCL are licensed under CC BY 4.0
