Importance in Uniform Coding

22 Sep 2022

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Uniform Coding

Coding standards were created to give a uniform appearance to codes. Similar to the idea that every person has their own unique handwriting, every programmer has their own unique coding style. We were taught as elementary school students the right away to write paragraphs, form sentences, and proper punctuation. With coding standards, programmers with different coding styles would be writing code within the same rules, syntax, and structure to ensure readability and maintainability. Coding standards allows errors to be detected easily and increases efficiency for the programmers.

I believe that learning the coding standards aids in learning a programming language. Having a strong foundation in coding can allow a beginner programmer to learn more and be more efficient. Knowing proper indentation and naming conventions are very important to increase the ability for other programmers to read your code. But it also allows you to be able to read other programmers code.

ESLint is an open source project that analyzes your code as you are writing and finds problems. I find ESLint very useful because it shows the green checkmark when it indicates your code has no errors. As I was writing code for my WOD, it told me I had multiple errors such as unused variables and functions or unnecessary semicolons. Other programs would not disclose exactly what is wrong with my code and I would have to search for which semicolon was unnecessary.

All in all, coding rules and guidelines makes sure that programs are reliable, testable, and maintainable. It also provides an opportunity for a new programmer to build a strong language foundation. Programmers are given a uniform, so we must wear it every day.