How to inform a colleague of .NET and C# coding guidelines without offending him?

Question

I have a good colleague at work that I work often and he is pretty smart. He is not a .NET programmer but now is coding for a long time too, mainly C++, Python, etc. I see that he is using Python like guidelines in naming, etc, and in shared code, it looks non-uniform to have things like:

getEffectById, etc and many other Python names, etc.

How do you guys think I should tell this to him so he isn't offended or think I am looking down on his code or skills, because I don't.

Answer 1

Why would he be offended? He's there to do a job and that job is coding in C# within a team of C# programmers and common sense dictates that he should work with the team and not against them, surely he would understand that?

P.s. I think buying him tools he may not wish to use will just p*ss him off. I know a C++ Dev who absolutely hated Resharper "f*cking with his code".

Answer 2

Introduce him to Resharper, and it's hints will hopefully get him to change.

Answer 3

Personally what i would do in this situation is a peer code review - sit with the developer after they have finished some work and go through it with them and suggest areas where it could change, offer to do the same for them on your code so they done feel its a 1 way street

a good peer review can mean you will both learn something

Answer 4

Perhaps you could propose that you both author separate style guides to adhere to depending on the language of the project. He'll feel good about sharing his Python-fu with you and your team, and he won't feel "dumb" about learning C# conventions from your document.

Answer 5

There is not an absolute fixed guideline as to what constitutes good naming standards in a given language, except that within an organization and a code base, consistency is king.

There are published guidelines that many have adopted, but these are by no means fast-and-hard. My organization uses C# exclusively, and we_use_underscores to great effect. Style is arbitrary; as long as we are consistent our code is not a mess. (It should also be noted, in light of the ReSharper recommendations in other answers, that we are avid ReSharper users, and this in no way forces us to use pascal case or any fixed style -- it is fully configurable.)

Clearly, your organization lacks a style guide. You don't need to single your colleague out, but you can collectively, with a group of colleagues, broach the subject of naming conventions by pointing out the inconsistencies in your code base. You can collectively debate the alternatives and come up with a style guide for your code. From that point, everyone is bound by that guide, and there can be no offense taken if someone is asked to clean up their code according to the guidelines.

Answer 6

Just that you have these coding guidelines while programming in C# because that's the standard way to do things.

If a programmer takes offense at that, you might want to ask yourself why you hired him, because he's going to be hard to work with.

Answer 7

Three good reference books:

• Framework Design Guidelines
• Clean code
• Real World Functional Programming

Those can be used as a reference. To ensure code quality I recommend a CI build server with code analysis tools like FxCop.

Resharper & StyleCop-plugin are also nice to have.

Answer 8

Get your company to buy a copy of Resharper for him. The addon enforces good coding standards and naming convensions.

That or get FXCop and set it up the way you like it and give him a copy too. You can tell him that everyone will use it to standardize the how you do your naming. That way he shouldn't feel singled out.

Answer 9

"Hey I think it would be better if we all followed a single standard. Do you think we should all code in C# standard?"

Answer 10

Tell him straight out what you think in a respectful way. If you need to go further to convince him, that will depend on his response.

Thinking of a smart way to tell him is an example of premature optimization. Why do you think he'll respond poorly.

On the other hand those camel-cased names look okay for C#, though they do have that awful thing that method names begin with caps.

Answer 11

Just say "No offense, but..."

This works 100% in any case.

Answer 12

Actually, C++ codes has better skills than c# coders (sorry..) It took me a while to get used to the new c# conventions... you can still find in my code nParameter for an int one ect...

I don't think it's a problem - as long as everybody uses the same conventions - so don't tell him that his conventions are wrong. decide which one you're using and everyone should go along with that.