How to Look Like a Good Programmer!
07 Feb 2019
I was taught that the three most important parts to a program are security, readability, and efficiency. Readability is important when writing code for a company since coworkers can understand your code faster, which saves the company time, and in turn their money. The easiest way to make your code readable is to follow coding standards. Coding standards were put in place so that everyone is on the same page, and can easily understand code.
Benefits of Coding Standards
Coding standards are the most important thing when making your code readable. Having readable code will save plenty of time of others understanding your code. Finding bugs in your programs is also much easier when having readable code. If you can’t understand what the code does, you will have no chance in finding bugs in the program. Also, having coding standards will help with code maintenance. If a coder retires from a company, It will be much easier to maintain their code if everyone follows the same coding standards. I was told by a professor that having pretty code will get you further when applying for jobs, so I would say that is a big benefit.
Improvements
One thing I wish was different about coding standards, is that they would be more universal. Coding standards are just preferences on how to write your code, which has led to many companies to work with many different standards. I understand that different languages benefit from different coding standards, but if they were more universal for the same languages it would be easier when working on multiple projects with different coding standards.
ESLint
I have started using ESLint to check my code for about a week now, and I have really enjoyed it. I am still getting used to ESLint and it will probably take me a few more weeks to write code without check style errors, especially after following the coding standards in ICS 212 without an IDE to fix it for me. I got really used to writing code in the coding standards of ICS 212, that it happened unconsciously when writing code. Now having an IDE correcting my code will be much easier in the beginning, but it might take me a little longer to accurately follow the new coding standards. I think getting the green check mark is very useful. It might be a little frustrating at first, but I know that it is there to help me.