standards of software coding and how google circumvents these coding standards

At Google, to manage our codebase, we maintain a set of style guides that define our rules. Rules are laws. They are not just suggestions or recommendations, but strict, mandatory laws. As such, they are universally enforceable—rules may not be disregarded except as approved on a need-to-use basis. In contrast to rules, guidance provides recommendations and best practices. These bits are good to follow, even highly advisable to follow, but unlike rules, they usually have some room for variance.

GitConnected

levelup.gitconnected.com › python-coding-standards-i-learned-from-google-11c7e07b7b24

Python Coding Standards I Learned From Google | by ByteCook | Level Up Coding

July 28, 2024 - It’s actually no joke. Google has very strict requirements for coding standards.

Discussions

Differences between the coding standards of Google, Gnu and Coreguidlines

They are completely different. The "exact differences" would be the entirety of the guides themselves. More on reddit.com

r/cpp

March 21, 2021

Does Google enforce high quality standards for its code base?

Google are generally better than some, but subsets of their public codebases (parts of Angular, etc) are over-engineered spaghetti. More on reddit.com

r/AskProgramming

October 27, 2020

Coding practices at Google and Microsoft vs. startups

In a nutshell, he stressed that at Google and Microsoft, you write code that has to be supported for many, many years. I can see that at Microsoft. But at Google the product will be discontinued within the next 24 months anyway. More on reddit.com

r/SoftwareEngineering

January 19, 2023

CPP Core Guidelines or Google's C++ style guide?

Google's styleguide is very opinionated while core guidelines consists of general purpose rules which will produce idiomatic c++ More on reddit.com

r/cpp

December 2, 2022

TextSlashPlain

textslashplain.com › 2024 › 01 › 02 › coding-at-google

Coding at Google – text/plain

June 25, 2025 - These coding standards are, to the extent possible, enforced by automated tooling to ensure that all code is written to the standard, and these standards are shared across teams by default, with any per-project exceptions (e.g.

Engineerscodex

read.engineerscodex.com › engineer’s codex › how google writes clean, maintainable code

How Google writes clean, maintainable code - Engineer's Codex

August 17, 2024 - All these companies have tooling, style guides, mentorship, and other practices that help them maintain a standard of code quality, allowing them to move fast without delving into “terrible code” territory.

GitHub

google.github.io › eng-practices › review › reviewer › standard.html

The Standard of Code Review | eng-practices

The primary purpose of code review is to make sure that the overall code health of Google’s code base is improving over time. All of the tools and processes of code review are designed to this end · In order to accomplish this, a series of trade-offs have to be balanced

Sourcery

sourcery.ai › blog › dissecting-the-google-style-guide

Dissecting the Google Style Guide

Not to be confused with 2.21 Type Annotated Code, this section sets out a series of guidelines around how to annotate your code and some broad guidelines on when and when not to annotate your code · Google has tens of thousands of software engineers on their team - so you might be thinking that having an explicit style guide is clearly good for a company with that level of complexity, but doesn’t make sense for smaller organisations.

reddit.com › r/cpp › differences between the coding standards of google, gnu and coreguidlines

r/cpp on Reddit: Differences between the coding standards of Google, Gnu and Coreguidlines

March 21, 2021 -

The title almost said it. Is there a page that lists the exact differences between the coding standards of Google, Gnu and Coreguidelines? I'm just trying to find an overview. Thanks in advance.

I've already seen Nicolai Josuttis's video

Ben

Top answer

1 of 4

Google are generally better than some, but subsets of their public codebases (parts of Angular, etc) are over-engineered spaghetti.

2 of 4

Google’s internal code base, particularly core libraries in their massive monorepo, are exceptionally clean, tested, and well documented.

Medium

laiyuanyuan-sg.medium.com › mastering-go-in-depth-analysis-of-uber-and-googles-coding-standards-3b3fb9391ee3

Mastering Go: In-Depth Analysis of Uber and Google’s Coding Standards | by Stefanie Lai | Medium

February 7, 2024 - By delving into the common standards and practices derived from renowned sources like Effective Go, Google Go Style Guide, and Uber Go Style Guide, let’s reveal the essence of Go programming style guides, navigate through the tools that aid in enforcing these standards, highlight the limitations of automated linting, and pinpoint the crucial aspects developers should internalize.

Medium

arminnorouzi.medium.com › style-guides-and-rules-pathway-to-googles-success-b7521f55f1ec

Style Guides and Rules: Pathway to Google's Success | Medium

November 15, 2023 - Discover Google's rule-based approach to software engineering, a cornerstone in achieving structured, efficient, and harmonious codebases.

Norbix

norbix.dev › posts › google style guides — writing consistent, readable, and maintainable code

Google Style Guides — Writing Consistent, Readable, and Maintainable Code | norbix.dev

August 13, 2026 - Python makes it very easy to write concise code. That does not mean maximum concision should always be the goal. Readable Python is usually better than clever Python. The Google Java Style Guide defines Google’s coding standards for Java source code.

Google

google.github.io › styleguide › cppguide.html

Google C++ Style Guide | Google Style Guides

The goal of this guide is to manage this complexity by describing in detail the dos and don’ts of writing C++ code. These rules exist to keep the codebase manageable while still allowing coders to use C++ language features productively.

InfoQ

infoq.com › news › 2014 › 02 › google-java-coding-standards

Google's Java Coding Standards - InfoQ

February 10, 2014 - Google has recently released their complete definition of coding standards for Java source code. These are hard-and-fast rules that are clearly enforceable, and are followed universally within Google.

reddit.com › r/softwareengineering › coding practices at google and microsoft vs. startups

r/SoftwareEngineering on Reddit: Coding practices at Google and Microsoft vs. startups

January 19, 2023 -

Hey, I recently sat together with Michael Lynch, an ex-Googler and ex-Microsoftie who now runs his own tech start-up, Tiny Pilot.

I asked him about software engineering practices at Google and Microsoft and how they differ from what he now does at his own start-up. We are both code review fans, so we also talked about this engineering practice.

In a nutshell, he stressed that at Google and Microsoft, you write code that has to be supported for many, many years. In a start-up, you might not even know if the code will ever have customers. So, quality concerns are totally different.

He also said that in a start-up, as a technical founder, you do not have to convince anybody to pay back technical debt. It's at your own discretion. So moving fast at the beginning is not such a problem.

Still, at his own start-up, he does code reviews, also to mentor his contractors and to ensure the code is maintainable and consistent. And he also writes tests.

But he does all of that always with an eye on the return on investment, which we should also do in other settings.

So, if it's too hard to write that unit test, he writes an integration test. And if he sees manual testing is sufficient at the moment, he does not write tests.

I found the conversation very interesting and insightful. If you want to listen to it, you can check it out here: https://www.software-engineering-unlocked.com/coding-practices-maang/