My suggestions: * When it is appropriate to use a child class with virtual functions, the virtual functions should all be declared as protected in the parent class.
At first reading, I thought you meant "all virtual functions should be protected", but I think you meant "if a child ADDS a virtual function that the parent doesn't have, ...", but in that case I don't see why the parent needs a declaration at all. This should be clarified. * Namespaces In general, I don't like namespaces, unless you're defining a package. Class names create their own name spaces, globals should be global, etc. Saying "everything should be in a namespace" is IMHO an inappropriate restriction. Indicate where namespaces are appropriate, leave it at that. * All data members should be private. * All data members should have names which end with an underscore. This makes all structures illegal. I'd remove the first "All" and replace the second with "Private": * Data members should be private. * Private data members should have names which end with an underscore. * When a method refers to a non-static data member, it should always qualify the reference with this->. I'm very opposed to this. To me, it makes the code less readable because it lets the author write code that's hard to understand at a larger scope. I would forbid explicit references to "this" except to pass it unadorned as a parameter to some other function. If it's not clear where method call data comes from, write clearer code! If you're implementing a class, it should be clear you're implementing a class, and implied that data/methods come from the class unless specified otherwise (which you'd have to do anyway, like foo->reg_p()). If it's not clear, you've not properly encapsulated the class and you need to redesign it so it *is* properly contained and easy to understand. If you're not implementing a class, you'd never use "this" anyway. DJ never refers to himself in the third person, I don't see why his code should. * At least for now we will continue to use printf style I/O rather than <iostream> style I/O THANK YOU! * use of existing templates, e.g., from the standard library, is fine I'd prefer avoiding pulling in STL stuff at first. I find STL to be quite a "culture shock" relative to C. When used I'd limit it to one STL object at a time - avoid containers of lists of vectors of strings, etc. Additions: * Local variables should be declared where they're first used, if their use is contiguous and localized. If they're ubiquitous (like a return value temporary) or reused later (like "i" for for-loop iterators), declare them at the beginning of the function. * Use C-style comments for multi-line comments, and C++-style comments for single-line comments.
