What Are Coding Best Practices?

When we do things, there is often a way to do them better, more efficiently, by wasting less effort and by investing our energy into things that could benefit from it. Coding is a profession which could always use improvement from the developer’s side. You could write bad code and still get away with it. The code will run, but once something breaks and someone else needs to come and clean things up after you, they will be cursing your name and your progeny for generations to come.

In order to be a better coder, there are some common practices that you should employ if you want to write clean and good code.

Simplicity

The simpler your code is, the better. Complicated functions which have multiple arguments can get out of hand and have side effects later.

Your code should be simple and to the point. That also means that a single function should do one task, and that you should label it correctly, so that people don’t need to guess what the function is. Don’t use memes or internal stuff to label your code unless you’ll be the only person who will be working with it.

The simpler your code is, the better. Try to write lines which are horizontally short. Move to the next row and keep writing. Humans do better with vertical text rather than horizontal, anyway.

Labeling and Documentation

This is one of the pitfalls that many coders fall into. You build stuff but you either don’t comment on it or you comment but so poorly that you might as well not have commented. The last thing you should do is leave actual code in the comment without explaining what it does. Code alone will make everyone think that it is something important, or that it could be and they might leave it there. This could confuse the next who knows how many developers who get in contact with your code.

Make sure to label everything clearly, and that the labels can be pronounced easily. Good documentation is a sign of a good coder, one who not only thinks about themselves, but the world of coding in general.

Standardization

One of the things to consider is to adhere to universal standards, if there are any regarding your branch of coding. There are always standards that you should follow, like open source standards. Some of them change, but if you follow standards, your code will be one of many similar layers of code, meaning that most developers will have zero issues following it and fixing anything or changing, should anything need addressing.

Since there are multiple standards you could adhere to, choose one which fits your project.

Backup Often

Whenever you make changes to your code, you should save it and have a backup. Code can be lost very quickly if there is anything like a crash, blackout, or any other error which can cause your editor to shut down unexpectedly. Make backups a frequent thing, as soon as you change code. You will be grateful to yourself later.

There could be a thousand more nuanced pieces of information that you could apply and make your coding better. These tips should work well if you want to be better at coding but also have fewer errors and problems in the long run.