A List of Practices
This appendix contains a list of various methods and heuristics that are described throughout the book, including where to find them.
A.1 The 50/72 Rule
Write conventional Git commit messages.
Write a summary in the imperative, no wider than 50 characters.
If you add more text, leave the next line blank.
You can add as much extra text as you’d like, but format it no wider than 72 characters.
Apart from the summary, focus on explaining why a change was made, since what constitutes the change is already visible via Git’s diff view. See subsection 9.1.1.
A.2 The 80/24 Rule
Write small blocks of code.
In C-based languages like C#, Java, C++, or JavaScript, consider staying within a 80 × 24 character box. That corresponds ...
Get Code That Fits in Your Head: Heuristics for Software Engineering now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
