We use guidelines to write everything! They’re used for writing essays, research papers, articles, and even social media posts about dogs. Sometimes we don’t notice it, but we use standards for writing everything in a consistent format. The same applies to software engineering. We often use coding standards to guide us while we write hundreds of lines of code. Coding standards are an important aspect of software engineering that enables consistently readable code to be written using guidelines and rules.
Integrated development environments (IDE) are there for us when we need them the most during our software engineering careers. I enjoy experiencing new environments for developing software. Learning about different IDEs is an effective way to learn different perspectives of developing in a specific language. They often provide plenty of useful features that relieve some of the pressure of software engineering off our shoulders. For example, quick documentation for functions and objects are very useful for programmers. Although it’s a simple feature, it helps us learn about the implementations of a language. For my software engineering class, we learned about using IntelliJ IDEA for developing in JavaScript. After using the IDE for more than a week, I believe that it feels very natural and modern. For me, IntelliJ IDEA uses a familiar layout because I’ve been using PyCharm for Python development. The graphical interface is very clean and easy to navigate. Furthermore, IntelliJ IDEA assists with enforcing coding standards. We were able to use the ESLint tool to detect violations in our code. Although it was a rocky start, ESLint’s constant complaints helped me stick to the rules. Using coding standard tools in IntelliJ helped me improve my software engineering skills and the quality of my code.
Coding standards is one of the great wonders of the programming world. They enable us to create consistently readable code that eases team development and avoids confusion. Coding standards provide a way to enforce readability upon our code. Although it may be a pain, tools such as ESLint are only doing what’s best for us. It helps us keep our code organized, readable, and consistent by continuously yelling at us until we fix it. Enforcing these rules helps us avoid inconsistent code that may be confusing to read later. Also, coding standards improves the experience of developing in teams. It allows developers maintain a common format with their code. The readability and consistency factors are important when communicating code between team members. Furthermore, the standards provide a means of coding discipline. Instead of allowing developers to do whatever they want with their code, it restricts us to a specific format that must be followed. This is useful for software engineering because the green check mark helps us stay careful and vigilant while we program. It may be an inconvenience, but it’s there to improve our software engineering skills.
Software engineering is more than just writing code that works. Similarly, writing essays is more than just writing words that make sense. There are standards to meet and rules to follow to enable software engineers to hone their craft. Coding standards are an important aspect of creating readable and well-engineered software. IDEs make it easy to enforce these standards with helpful features, so you should pick yours carefully. Follow those standards and you’ll definitely get somewhere in software engineering.