Canonical Form

Problem

Lack of uniformity in coding styles makes it difficult to use and/or maintain a class written by someone else.

Solution

Many organizations have explicit coding conventions that all developers are required to follow. These conventions are sometimes articulated as templates. Many IDEs also provide templates along with wizards to help fill them in.

Canonical form refers to a minimalistic coding convention that includes layout, commenting, and administrative methods.

Canonical Form

These conventions are taken a step further with the Java Bean standard.