Have you ever heard of the All-in-One Framework? Well I hadn't. They've been around for about 18 months. Back in February, on their first anniversary, they described themselves like this:

...this initiative [has been] developed by the CodeFx Project Group to an "all-in-one code framework" that includes more than 300 code samples, covers almost all Microsoft development technologies, ranks 18th among 13000 open source projects on CodePlex, received numerous kudos from customers, proved its values in real support incidents, and created a lot of win-win opportunities within the corporation.

It looks like the participants are all Microsoft employees and they're collecting pieces of code for any language and platform that can be used to solve real world problems. On the CodePlex site, they elaborate:

Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework delineates the framework and skeleton of Microsoft development techniques through typical sample codes in three popular programming languages (Visual C#, VB.NET, Visual C++). Each sample is elaborately selected, composed, and documented to demonstrate one frequently-asked, tested or used coding scenario based on our support experience in MSDN newsgroups and forums. If you are a software developer, you can fill the skeleton with blood, muscle and soul. If you are a software tester or a support engineer like us, you may extend the sample codes a little to fit your specific test scenario or refer your customer to this project if the customer's question coincides with what we collected.

For example, they've written a summary of the ways to call native C++ code from managed code. You can find the pieces elsewhere, but having them all together makes it easier for you to compare and contrast. They often blog additions as they are completed.

Now as you can imagine, a big team creating hundreds of samples needs some sort of vision and structure to keep things consistent. That's where the style guide comes in. And now you can download it from CodePlex. It's an 87 page Word document that covers everything you might wonder about, for both native and managed code, including tabs-vs-spaces (no tabs, please), how much to comment (as I blogged recently and not so recently), Hungarian Notation (use it in native code if you must, but it's a relic; do not use it in managed code), smart pointers (yes, but don't bring in all of ATL for them - I look forward to this section being updated for C++0x), the right way to implement IDisposable, and an especially nice section on Interop at the end.

I don't care what language you work in - this is a document you should at least skim. It could settle some arguments at the office, improve your code, and spare you from some horrible bugs. Download it, won't you?

Kate