The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
20 Sep 2018Disclaimer: I have actually never watched the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but I do like the poster.
Coding Standards?
When your teacher assigns you an literary analysis essay to write, do you just go ahead and type whatever comes to your head in a huge pile of text? No, you follow the classic introduction, body, conclusion format. When you do your calculus homework, do you just write anywhere random equations and just circle (or box) your answer? Probably not (Hopefully not), you have to write your steps in orderly fashion so that the person checking your work would know that you did the problem correctly. Anyhow, following certain standards in some activities helps not only you, but also other people to evaluate your own work. In programming, I believe that coding standards enhance the readability of your code and it allows people to debug it faster.
My Experience
When I first started programming, I never had a single clue about coding standards and check styles; I only focused on the content of my programs and ignorantly de-emphasizing the importance of proper formatting and style. As I gained more experience in programming, I slowly uncovered the significance of following coding standards. For instance, ICS 211 required everyone to install the Checkstyle plugin on Eclipse—if you forget to fix Checkstyle errors on each homework, you get penalized. At first, it was tedious having to reformat everything, but as time went by, I gradually loved doing it. Just looking at my finished code with proper Javadoc, indentation, etc. made it more satisfying than ever. Now that I am in Software Engineering (ICS 314), the rules have not changed (it never will), and I am back again with something similar to Checkstyle called ESLint.
The Good
As stated earlier, coding standards are essential because they help others understand your code more easily, and it enables you to find bugs in your code too. In my opinion, however, these are not the only benefits of following such standards. For me, adhering to them means that you allow yourself to be a part of the programming community. Since everyone is also following the same standards, you are showing that you want to cooperate and sync with them. A computer scientist like me will bound to work with others, and to show my willingness, following coding standards would be a great start.
The Bad
Coding Standards are very important; however, beginners who never really cared about formatting their codes will probably take time to get used to the coding standards. By this, I mean they could write codes without any sort assistance like Checkstyle or ESlint. Whenever they write codes, they should instinctively follow coding standards without even thinking about them. Also, you need to be somewhat flexible when transitioning from one language to another because that would mean you need to readjust yourself to another coding standard. Overall, I believe that coders should follow coding standards not because they think they have to follow the rules, but because they have to integrate them into their programming habits.
The Ugly
Now, you might be thinking: if there is bad, then what is ugly? I prefer to call my transition from Checkstyle to ESLint as ugly (for now) because of the Work Out of the Day (WOD) that we have to do in this software engineering class. Since I am not quite used to ESLint yet, it has definitely affected my time when trying to finish WODs, not to mention loading up IntelliJ and setting up the projects already takes off some time. Especially during in-class WODS, having to correct ESLint errors adds more pressure to such already nerve-wracking assessment. Nevertheless, I still think that it is a skill I need to learn in order to overcome such difficulty.
Overall, I cannot express enough how important coding standards are. Aside from the benefits stated above, they also teach you how to be organized and neat.