Coding standards. We hear a lot during our early years learning about software engineering/development about the difference between good code and bad code. What makes good code good and bad code bad? Ask many software developers, and you might come across a lot of different answers. However, for the most part, you should come across consistency in those answers
Coding standards are vital to the cohesiveness of a team of software developers. Whether that be a small team made up of 3-5 people or a bigger group, coding standards play an important part in quality assurance and to ensure that software developers can read and understand each others’ code. How could we understand what we are writing if we are on all different pages? We could to an extent, but it makes it much easier to understand if we all have some kind of foundation on which our code is written and what rules we should follow so that we don’t waste precious time trying to just get a grasp for the functionality of code. Good code is written in a way that is efficient, easy to read, and easy to understand that is consistent. Coding standards can help ensure that everyone follows rules so that they write good code. Bad code, on the other hand, is inefficient, difficult to read, full of errors, and is full of bloat code.
Our job as students is to soak in as much as we can to be the best software developers that we can. A big portion of that is not only learning the material, but learning the material well. It’s one thing to graps concepts, but to be able to understand material and can inform someone else about the material are two totally different things. When we relate this to programming, it’s the difference between a decent programmer/software developer and a great one. A great software developer understands concepts thouroughly and can explain to other people how certain aspects of their field work.
Coding standards aren’t just for making sure code looks good. It’s there to help us be better professionals in our field. It’s there for us to think about what we write in the first place instead of just going for it head first and hoping something works out.