Guides

Guides for working together, getting things done, programming well, and programming in style.

High level guidelines

• Be consistent.
• Don't rewrite existing code to follow this guide.
• Don't violate a guideline without a good reason.
• A reason is good when you can convince a teammate.

A note on the language

• "Avoid" means don't do it unless you have good reason.
• "Don't" means there's never a good reason.
• "Prefer" indicates a better option and its alternative to watch out for.
• "Use" is a positive instruction.

Guides by category

• thoughtbot Tech Stack
• General

Collaboration

• Code Review
• Communication
• Inclusive Culture
• Open Source
• Product Review
• Working Together

Protocols

• Accessibility
• Data
• Email
• Object-Oriented Design
• Security
• Web
• Web Performance

Languages

• Bash
• CoffeeScript
• CSS
• Elixir
• ERB
• HAML
• Handlebars
• Haskell
• HTML
• Java
• JavaScript
• Objective-C
• Python
• Ruby
• Sass
• Scala
• Shell
• Swift
• TypeScript

Frameworks and platforms

• Android
• Angular
• Ember
• iOS
• Rails
• React
• Testing with Jest
• Testing with RSpec

Tools

• Git
• GraphQL
• Postgres
• Relational Databases

Contributing

Please read the contribution guidelines before submitting a pull request.

In particular: if you have commit access, please don't merge changes without waiting a week for everybody to leave feedback.

Credits

Thank you, contributors!

Guides is maintained by thoughtbot, inc.

License

Guides is © 2020 thoughtbot, inc. It is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.