By the mere utterance of “coding standards”, the sky went dark and the mood turned gloomy in my first programming class. In a cut-and-dried manner, my professor stressed the importance of proper syntax which included naming conventions, spacing and brackets. The emphasis on these coding standard technicalities, misrepresented coding standards as being merely to improve code READABILITY. Now the skies have cleared and it’s a new day. At the time I failed to make the connection between coding standards and the assistance it can offer in learning a programming language. The consistency that a well implemented coding standard provides can give you a better understanding of “why” a code is written a certain way and the correlation that the “why” has with different parts of your code. With continuous coding standard consistency your coding inaccuracies become clearer with the solutions more unambiguous.
At first, the thought of learning yet another new thing was daunting. I found ESLint to be pretty amazing. Not yet well versed in ESLint, what I have experienced so far has helped me build some confidence. I appreciate all the red lines of ESLint because they are gentle notifications that “hey you might want to look at this” before you proceed. We all have been there where we have finished coding and are met with compiling errors. AHH!! ESLint steers you in the right direction and provides suggestions to make your code readable and less complex. Although I have yet to master all that ESLint has to offer I am elated that I have a new tool in my built that will remove some frustration from coding.
In almost all areas of our lives there is some sort of standard that we have adopted that contains specific criteria designed to be used as a rule or guideline. Standards provide a universal language to measure, evaluate and reflect shared values and ensure accountability. Coding standards are definitely more than just spacing and brackets.