Personally, I'd go with Erik's suggestion - why? It comes back to the issue of 'magic numbers' that is numbers that obviously mean something but the exact meaning is obscure. Erik's approach is more structured and is what I would expect from a professional programmer. I might argue with the naming convention - but at least he has the rules for a consistant naming convention. Could you imagine trying to program in Windows without having a naming convention and all constants as magic numbers?