Naming conventions for variables

After several years of experience in software development, I found a way of naming variables (attributes, fields, field declarations, as you like) that I feel convenient with.

First of all, in any class representing a business object (i.e., that contains business logic to a certain amount) there should only be private variables. Protected variables don't allow for implementing the Observer pattern! Use getters and setters instead. In few classes it may seem suitable using public fields because those classes are only used as very simple data containers.

My naming conventions for variables have evolved to the following:

• At class level - for private and protected fields (if any) - I use the prefix m_
• At method level there are two cases:
  a) method signature: I use prefix a_
  b) method body: No prefix, just the variable name.

Using this kit of simple concepts, it is very easy determining the scope of a variable just by looking at its name very superficially. In a setter method, the naming conventions allows to quickly find assignment errors and helps avoiding "this.", which in most cases (I saw) is regarded as ugly.

After an possible prefix the name of the variable starts with a lowercase letter. If there are multiple words concatenated together, from the second word on each word starts with an uppercase letter, such as: private int m_thisIsMyVariable;

Variables being constants by having the final static modifiers, are written all in uppercase letters. By the way, they are always public (at least if they are declared at class level).