Organizational and Policy Issues

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

—Gerald Weinberg

In the grand tradition of C and C++, we count the zero-based way. The prime directive, Item 0, covers what we feel is the most basic advice about coding standards.

The rest of this introductory section goes on to target a small number of carefully selected basic issues that are mostly not directly about the code itself, but on essential tools and techniques for writing solid code.

Our vote for the most valuable Item in this section goes to Item 0: Don’t sweat the small stuff. (Or: Know what not to standardize.)