Thoughts on Coding Standards

20 Sep 2023

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Thoughts on Coding Standards

I believe that coding standards are extremely annoying, having to insert some spaces here and there to give a little space between parentheses and braces, just to satisfy the coding standard. However, the use or knowledge of coding standards provides a strong baseline in learning how to code. More importantly, it makes it easier for others and yourself to review and critique the code you wrote. There is a huge difference between having an excessive amount of spaces at the end of a line compared to having no indentation in your program.

Having a consistent styling guide can restrict the variations between coders of all levels. Of course, it is unrealistic to expect everyone to conform to the same style of coding of a single person. Eventually, a programmer will find their own coding style after following the style they were taught.

Use of ESLint

My experiences so far with ESLint as the program checking if my code follows JavaScript is mixed. By using ESLint I started becoming more aware of my variable declarations, as I always use “let.” Although I personally believe using “let” is a good catch-all, using “const” can help readers know what the variable is being used for.

A major issue I had with ESLint is how it handles squiggly brackets. In ICS 212 we had to put opening squiggly brackets on a new line, where ESLint tells otherwise. I personally believe that putting the brackets on a new line gives a better reading experience since it appears to be “hugging” the code.

Final Thoughts

Always try to follow a coding style or standard. If you think that it will be too annoying, the important part is that you remain consistent when writing your code. You do not want to end up looking back at your code and getting confused about what you wrote. Even worse if you are unable to read your own code.