Krzysztof Cwalina: Design Guideline Digest

Two of my favorite Microsoft blogs to read are Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina. 

Recently, Krzysztof posted a summary of the MSDN API Design Guidelines.  This is an excellent resource for anyone looking to create a set of coding standards for their project, group, company, or merely wanting a concise reference to the extremely thorough and detailed guidelines posted on MSDN.

Before developing my own guidelines, I enjoyed reading the excellent prescriptive design guidelines on MSDN, along with Brad's, and Krzystof's blogs discussing the various guidelines and standards posted there.  You will notice their heavy influence throughout my C# Coding Standards specification.  

One question I am frequently asked is; Why not just use the MSDN guidelines as THE standard?

The simple answer is; the MSDN documents focus primarily upon API design for class library developers.  This is extremely valuable and important, but often omits guidelines developers need when just writing code that consumes existing class libraries.  Today, most developers spend 90% of their time writing the "glue" code that binds the .NET Framework and related class libararies, to the application frameworks such as ASP.NET, WinForms, BizTalk, etc.   My C# Coding Standards are an attempt to address the core guidelines needed by those developers.  However, if you spend 90% of your time writing class libraries, not "glue" code, then the "MSDN Design Guidelines for Class Library Developers" is the best place to learn the in's and out's of writing consumable code.