Unless they have set standards beforehand, teams of programmers will find it difficult to read and use each others' code within the first few minutes of the initiation of a project. However, creating a standard can take more time than the project itself. In an effort to reduce frustration and inefficiency, these authors, all of whom are high-end users and developers, offer general principles for C++ code, including principles and conventions for naming, documentation, programming, and packaging, and a short glossary.