6 Coding Rules
Ignoring best coding practices can lead to creating low-quality software that may break at any moment, have poor performance, or be difficult to update. And we certainly don't want that to happen.
If you've ever talked to developers, you've certainly heard stories of disasters and jokes about bad coding practices. This might lead you to think that poor code is inevitable and that if you get into development, you'll inevitably encounter bad practices. However, this is not necessarily the case.
As those same developers might say, in software development there are a number of standards and coding practices with which most of them are undoubtedly familiar. They are included in software development courses, used in developer teams, or even learned on the job. The main problem is that they are not standardized or formally defined—they are professional techniques that developers are encouraged to follow in order to write good code.
Another problem is that too many of them do not always follow these practices. For such developers, the only thing that matters is that the final product works as intended, even if that means skipping comments or bypassing peer reviews. In other words, the coding process only includes writing usable code, not writing good code. However, as we already noted, ignoring best practices can lead to creating low-quality software that may break at any moment, have poor performance, or be difficult to update.
That's why it's so important to follow best practices and coding guidelines. They serve as standards that must be followed throughout the development process to improve the final quality of the code. By adhering to them, developers and development teams can ensure products work, as well as improve their performance and create a more reliable foundation for updates and upgrades.
That's why I decided to revisit some key practices that we at ESK Solution adhere to in order to ensure the quality of our code and products.
Why You Should Use Best Coding Practices
Using best practices seems intuitive—if something is good, you should definitely use it, right? Unfortunately, my experience shows that in the software development world, this is not always the case. As I already noted, many software developers sacrifice some of these practices to meet deadlines or reduce workload.
However, the short-term benefit a developer might gain from ignoring best coding practices pales in comparison to the advantages they could achieve by actually following them. Here are just a few of those advantages:
- Improved workflow
- Increased efficiency and productivity
- Higher product quality
- More organized work
- Reduced costs
Let's take a closer look at the main benefits of writing good code.
Improved Workflow
Following best practices streamlines all development processes because the entire team generally understands the nature of the work being done. Teams that follow these best practices communicate better, understand each other's roles, and prioritize more effectively, making the entire lifecycle much smoother.
Increased Efficiency and Productivity
When the whole team adheres to best coding practices, everyone has a better understanding of the project, which leads to fewer instances of software crashes or bugs and reduces the need for constant fixes. This maximizes the efficiency of everything developers code, ultimately leading to increased productivity.
Higher Product Quality
Peer reviews and code comments allow teams to identify errors and issues at earlier stages, enabling them to work on fixing them before the product goes into production. This means fewer problems will arise later, ultimately leading to improved code efficiency, better performance, and a more stable product (which also ultimately means increased software reliability).
More Organized Work
Most development teams use management platforms to track project progress, but they can go beyond that by using tags. With tags, they can create a more structured file organization tied to specific tasks. This makes it easier for developers to find what they need to work on at any given time and helps them better organize their work.
Cost Reduction
All the factors mentioned above (increased efficiency and productivity, improved workflow, and higher product quality) converge in this advantage. A team that follows best practices and coding conventions spends less time fixing bugs and gets the most out of the time spent on a specific task.
Gaining these five benefits should be enough reason to convince any developer or development team to adopt good or better coding practices. Even if developers don't care about organization or productivity, avoiding the frustration of errors should be sufficient motivation to implement best practices.
Now that you understand the importance of good coding practices, let's look at some of the basics.
6 Essential Coding Practices for Any Programming Language
Any experienced developer will notice that just six practices don't cover the full range of best practices to follow. That may be true, but for the purposes of this article, these six practices provide a solid foundation for achieving higher code quality. They also perfectly illustrate how important it is to write code correctly.
So, the six essential coding practices include the following:
- Commenting
- Peer Review
- Merge Requests
- Tags
- Meaningful Naming Conventions
- Don't Repeat Yourself
#1 Commenting
When a developer works on their code, they follow a logic that isn't always easy for others to understand (and even for themselves after some time!). That's why commenting code is very useful: it provides explanations for code snippets that may later help other developers who need to rework someone else's code.
Comments are simple notes whose sole purpose is to make it easier for those reviewing the code to understand what the developer intended. Many developers think writing comments is a waste of time, but that's never the case. Even if comments seem redundant, they can serve specific purposes, from reminding the developer of the logic behind a line of code to teaching novice programmers how to write good code by shedding light on its purpose.
#2 Peer Review
Another component of good coding standards is peer review, which means that all code written by a developer is always reviewed by someone else. This simple step allows developers to submit their work to a fresh set of eyes that can more easily spot issues in the code and point them out before they become more serious.
Code review should be a standard process in all types of projects, but its importance in large and complex projects cannot be overstated. If a developer merges code that has not been reviewed, they expose the entire project to potentially more serious issues that can lead to increased costs and effort to fix them. That is why it is always better to foster collaboration between developers early in the project so they can review each other's code.
#3 Pull Requests
A pull request occurs when a developer notifies the rest of the team about changes they have worked on that need to be placed into the main repository. The pull request system can be seen as an alert system in which developers inform each other that there is modified code that needs to be reviewed and discussed before merging. In a sense, pull requests combine comments and peer review into one practice, although they are not always the same thing.
#4 Tags
One of the most ignored practices in software development, using tags (believe it or not) is very helpful for the process. This is because tags allow developers to quickly identify different files they are working on within a specific project. Thus, access to them becomes more efficient, and overall work organization improves. Tags also help identify features, bug fixes, and enhancements, ultimately creating a sort of index of everything covered in a particular project.
#5 Meaningful Naming Conventions
Naming conventions are useful for identifying and distinguishing classes, variables, types, and functions in the source code. To write strong code for software projects, it is always beneficial to use descriptive language that defines what the code includes. Any developer should be able to read the names used in someone else's code and understand what it contains.
This also promotes better code readability. Additionally, it provides more information to the reader, promotes clarity, and reduces ambiguity.
#6 Don't Repeat Yourself
Repetitive code, also called duplicate code or "copy-and-paste" code, is a block of code that appears multiple times in the codebase. Typically, this issue arises when programmers work quickly, but in this case, quality is sacrificed for speed. Although it can be useful in some cases, it should be minimized.
One of the biggest problems with repetitive code is that it can lead to increased technical debt. Moreover, it can make the code more vulnerable to security threats and risks.
At the same time, focusing on unique code with minimal duplication leads to improved readability, better testability, and higher overall code quality.
Writing Code the Right Way
At ESK Solution, we strictly adhere to these and other best coding practices to ensure a positive outcome for all our projects. In our view, these practices are the foundation of proper software development because they enable the creation of higher quality products that are easier to maintain, update, and modernize.
Our own experience makes us strong advocates of coding best practices: we have seen their transformative power in software development. So, while we appreciate a good joke and stories about bad coding, we always take coding best practices seriously—and so should you.