Raising the Bar Goes Far

08 Feb 2024

Over my lifetime, I’ve accumulated a wide collection of advice. Among all that advice, some of the most important pieces of advice that stand out to me are related to problem-solving.

Prevention is the proactive way to take care of problems. Don’t wait for a problem to happen before trying to do damage control. You must anticipate.
A small problem ignored now can become a larger problem later.
There are no shortcuts when getting to where you want to be.

Trivial or Vital

I essentially view coding standards as a practice that I can implement to help create high quality code. While it may be frustrating to get flagged for something that may seem trivial such as not including a third equals sign when completing an equality check in Javascript, it’s important to take the “little steps” now to prevent larger problems later on. Coding standards provide important guidelines that help developers create quality, maintainable, and readable code. Creating such code may result in easier collaboration due to better comprehensiveness, more bug resistant code and easier adaptability, and ultimately software with more longevity due to its maintainability. Not only is a developer that maintains coding standards making other developers’ lives easier, but they’re also making their own life easier too. Such standards can make it easier for other developers to easily understand what is going on in the code and may also make it easier for them to be able to contribute to the code. Who doesn’t want that? With this perspective looking at the grand scheme of things, does taking another second to add a third equals sign still seem very trivial? Taking a few seconds to fix the code serves as a long term investment in the code.

Building Professionalism

Coding standards can only help a developer, and it’s important to build these habits early to build professionalism. Not only do they show a dedication to quality work, but it may also demonstrate positive qualities for the workplace such as being collaborative and a strong communicator, being attentive to detail, adaptability, and reliability. As practices evolve, so must the developers. There are a ton of rules, though, and I recognize that it may make coding standards feel overwhelming or inaccessible. However, I also believe that it’s important to approach them with a desire to learn to help unlock the potential for better collaboration and quality code. With an open mind and the right resources and experience, one can improve their code quality very quickly with modern tools and resources, making it more approachable than ever.

Tools of the Trade

With modern tools such as Intellij IDEA which contain many features to aid in bug fixing and maintaining coding standards, there is little reason to not uphold such standards. I was actually quite impressed with Intellij. Not only do their warning messages seem to be more descriptive and clear which helps educate developers on potential problems, but one also has the ability to efficiently resolve all the warnings in a file all at once which is a game-changer. Such tools have revolutionized the way that developers can approach bug fixing. Not only does it perform real-time analysis, but it also visually highlights problems as they appear. Additionally, I appreciate how customizable the built-in support is made so that a developer can select the most appropriate tools for their project. Through the inclusion of these tools in a development environment, applying coding standards has seamlessly become a part of development. As these innovative tools continue to evolve and become smarter, it will be amazing to witness the evolution of the software development field and witness the tangible, positive results that come with higher quality work.