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Preface
AT ROGUE WAVE, we sell C++ and Java software components. We have always
included source code with our products. Customers often browse through the code to get
a feeling, not just for how it works, but for how to write good software. As a result, we
have always felt pressure—maybe more pressure than most companies—to have good,
consistent style throughout our source code.
As the company grew, making sure programmers were all following the same rules
became difficult. To address this, our founder and first programmer, Tom Keffer, wrote
35 pages that explained how we write C++ code at Rogue Wave. We passed the
document around and made sure new hires got a copy. It worked. When customers asked
how we maintained consistency in our coding, we told them about Tom’s ‘‘C++ Design,
Implementation, and Style Guide,” and sent them a copy. Word spread and we turned
Tom’s document into a technical report. We sent out thousands of copies and received
terrific positive feedback.
When Java came along, we decided we needed a document like the “C++ Guide.” A note
went out to our internal javadev@roguewave.com mailing list soliciting rules for Java use
that we should be using. The resulting list of rules became the first draft of the “Rogue
Wave Java Style Guide.”
As the list of rules grew, the style guide began to look more and more like a real book.
This time, we decided to publish our guide instead of simply issuing another Rogue
Wave technical report. To our amazement, the folks at Cambridge University Press
thought this was a great idea, and The Elements of Java Style was born.
One of the first reviewers of that original draft was Scott Ambler, current president of
Ronin International (www.ronin-intl.com). Scott liked the idea of the book and suggested
we check out the coding standards for Java he’d been distributing on the Web. We liked
his standards a lot and decided we should work as a team. The result of combining
Scott’s standards and the Rogue Wave style document is this book.
Audience
We wrote this book for anyone writing Java code, but especially for programmers who
are writing Java as part of a team. For a team to be effective, everyone must be able to
read and understand everyone else’s code. Having consistent style conventions is a good
first step!
We assume you already know the basics of Java and object-oriented programming.
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