A good programmer never stops learning and self-improvement. Apply best practices and build good programming habits that will allow you to effectively arrange and manage your workflow and create clean, bug-free code. I wish to thank my friend from Serokell for helping me in collecting ideas for this post.
Avoid duplication
Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) is one of the most fundamental programming principles. Never copy-paste the code to avoid further problems. Duplication substantially reduces the quality of the code, making it vulnerable and hard to edit and maintain.
You’ll need to refactor the code to remove the duplicates. Split the code into smaller chunks which you can load on demand.
Make refactoring a routine.
Refactoring is a perfect tool for editing and cleaning up your code. It modifies the internal code structure reducing complexity and enhancing the code readability.
Developers refactor codes not only when they detect duplicates or buds. They do it whenever needed – at the development stage, before adding new features or updating the code, and even after the product launch. Whatever time you choose for refactoring, make it a routine.
Make your commits small and distinct.
Many small and focused commits instead of a few big ones provide for better accuracy. They make the reviewing process faster and more efficient. It is much easier to read, understand and test short commits, identify and fix bugs and other defects, make and trace the changes.
Stay consistent.
Consistency is one of the most critical indicators of a good code. Be consistent in your style to keep your code readable and maintainable.
Choose the style guide that is most relevant to your needs. You can adhere to the guidelines for the specific programming language, the team coding standards, or make the guide yourself. Follow the guide in indentation, spacing, line length, lists, naming, and other coding conventions.
Don’t leave your code unfinished.
Half-finished code is most likely to remain such. Though you might be planning to return, make additions and complete it, there is a big chance you’ll never do it.
Plan your project before you start coding, and make sure you wind it up without missing any steps. Refactor the code, test it and respond to errors, provide well-written, reliable code documentation.
Pick up new skills and employ different programming paradigms.
There are four major programming paradigms in current use: imperative, logical, object-oriented, and functional.
Functional programming based on mathematical functions is gaining popularity in today’s software trends. It attracts programmers by its pure, first-class, and high-order functions, immutability, and easy parallelism. Among the advantages of this programming approach, we can name flexibility and efficiency, nested functions support, lazy evaluation, and the lack of side effects.
Understand business needs.
Understanding business is a must for a modern developer. Without that, you won’t understand the whole context of your work: what and why you are doing. You don’t need the extensive knowledge of business details but need to know its goal and logic, customer preferences, and mission of the product under creation.
To wind it up
Writing a clean, readable, and reusable code takes much effort, requires focus and a lot of practice. Tweak your programming habits, build good ones up, and become a skillful and well-rounded developer.
