Coding Best Practices

Quality

Maintainability is our top priority. Prefer simple over complex, and less over more.

Style

The goal is to make the code read as if it were written by one person.

• Prefer standard approaches over special cases.
• Be consistent with existing code in naming and layout.
• Follow the coding style guides — most rules are enforced by static analysis, but not all.

Refactoring

• Follow the boy scout rule — always leave code cleaner than you found it.
• However, keep refactoring out of feature or bug fix PRs unless it is trivial. When in doubt, open a separate issue.

Code Comments

• Use comments only when the code is not self-explanatory. Avoid redundant comments.
  • @return and @param tags can be omitted if they add no value.
• Write comments as explanations for the reader, not notes to yourself.

Issue Tracking

• Use descriptive issue names with a clear scope. "Improve DevMan" is too vague; "Add issue naming conventions to DevMan" is better.
• One issue, one fix. Do not combine unrelated changes in a single PR — this makes it impossible to revert a specific fix without reverting others.
• Prefer small issues over large ones. Large issues take longer and have a higher risk of merge conflicts.

Revision Control

Review your changeset before pushing to ensure all changes are intentional and nothing unrelated is included.