Over the years, I've had the pleasure (and sometimes pain) of being involved in writing and maintaining the internal coding standards documents for nearly every company I've ever worked for. I still have vivid memories of many bloody internal disputes over some really silly things - where the curly braces should go - whether or not to use underscores in front of member variables. I firmly believe you need them to keep a consistent level of code quality and to this day I will still dig in and fight for this cause. The biggest lesson I've learned:
"It doesn't matter what the standards are, as long as you have them and everyone agrees to adhere to them!"
I present to you the latest incarnations of my efforts: a zip file containing C# and VB.NET editions of my reference coding standards. I've been holding these for the holidays so that I could share a little something extra with my readers as the year winds down. I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with my standards but I hope by posting these, you can get a head start towards documenting your own.
Grab them. Customize them. Share with your friends.
Translated editions:
Portuguese by Eduardo Costa