The Power of Ten

http://spinroot.com/p10/

1 Restrict to simple control flow constructs.
2 Give all loops a fixed upper-bound.
3 Do not use dynamic memory allocation after initialization.
4 Limit functions to no more than 60 lines of text.
5 Use minimally two assertions per function on average.
6 Declare data objects at the smallest possible level of scope.
7 Check the return value of non-void functions, and check the validity of function parameters.
8 Limit the use of the preprocessor to file inclusion and simple macros.
9 Limit the use of pointers. Use no more than two levels of dereferencing per expression.
10 Compile with all warnings enabled, and use one or more source code analyzers.