This is where the Hungarian Naming Convention developed by a great Hungarian developer called Charles Simonyi who led Microsoft's development team in the afx days while the Microsoft Foundation Classes library was implemented. MFC is still in use to this day, though abstracted by layers like the .NET framework.

You will see where camelCase can be used, and where UPPERCASE can be used. Everything else is PascalNamingConvention. This rule of thumb will take you far (until we get to Hungarian that is).

camelCase convention Should be used only for local method variables, private variables, event handlers and catch blocks.

MyMethod()

{

    try

      {

        int nVariable;

        Button objButton = new Button();

        objButton.Click += myButtonClickHandler;

        …

      }

      catch(Exception ex) // or catch(Exception objException)

      {

        throw new Exception(“[MyMethod()] “ + 

		ex.Message);

      }

}

public class MyClass

{

    private int _nCounter=0;

}    

Note that private members in a class should always begin with an underscore. This is extremely _important. This will make your accessors and mutators (properties:get/set) easier to read.

UPPERCASE Convention Should only be used for constants and enumerated values.

const int PI=3.14159;

enum MyPossibleStates

{

    UNKNOWN=0,

    SLEEPING=1,

    RUNNING=2,

    AWAKE=3

}

(or)

enum MyPossibleStates

{

    UNKNOWN,

    SLEEPING,

    RUNNING,

    AWAKE

}

NOTE: Uppercase can also be used for abbreviations within Pascal. For example: System.Web.UI or System.IO.

The PascalNamingConvention is Used for NameSpaces, Classes, Method Arguments, Method Declarations, class members, method names, etc. Everywhere that camelCase or UPPERCASE cannot be used. Simple Rule of thumb.