Writing code is not only about solving problems and creating functionality, but also about communicating your ideas and intentions to other developers who might work with your code in the future. How can you make your code accessible for other developers? Here are some tips to improve your code readability and documentation.
One of the easiest ways to make your code accessible is to use consistent and meaningful naming conventions for your variables, functions, classes, and files. Avoid using vague or cryptic names that only make sense to you, and instead use descriptive and self-explanatory names that convey the purpose and logic of your code. For example, instead of using x, y, z, use width, height, depth, or instead of using foo, bar, baz, use calculateArea, formatString, sortList.
Naming functions and variables is key to efficient teamwork. If I have to give a name to a function, variable or interface, then I hold for 2 seconds and think of the chance my colleagues might also find the choice meaningful and appropriate to the commonly shared context.
The best way to make your code accessible to others is publishing them on public code repository with clear instructions. One should use consistent and meaning naming convention in their coding standard that would help readers and coders to understand the flow and add relevant comments for logic where they can mention about the moto for the logic added. One should avoid using vague or cryptic names in their logic that makes your application code undecipherable.
Another way to make your code accessible is to follow coding standards and best practices for your programming language, framework, and platform. Coding standards are a set of rules and guidelines that define how to write, format, and organize your code in a consistent and readable way. Best practices are recommendations and principles that help you write efficient, secure, and maintainable code. For example, you can follow the PEP 8 style guide for Python, the PSR standards for PHP, or the Google Java style guide for Java.
I heard somewhere that if you repeat something twice in your code that you can then abstract it. Well, the truth is that I find it much more important to ask myself if the code is readable, whether I will remember the key-elements also in 4 months from now. And yes, a good abstraction and dependency-injection is key to achieving this.
Think of coding standards and best practices as the common language spoken by software engineers. The less you deviate from these coding standards and best practices, the lesser the new concepts the reader has to register, making it as easy as reading a language you speak and read with ease. Deviating from these best practices isn't unheard of, but there should be a very strong reason backing the deviation from the tried and tested methodologies used by the rest of the industry.
A third way to make your code accessible is to comment and document your code properly. Comments are short notes or explanations that you add to your code to help other developers understand what your code does, why you did it that way, and how it works. Documentation is a more comprehensive and structured way of describing your code, its features, its dependencies, its usage, and its limitations. For example, you can use the # symbol for single-line comments, the """ or ''' symbols for multi-line comments or docstrings in Python, or the /** and */ symbols for JavaDoc comments in Java.
Comments are easy - but yes, it is extra work. And it is only short-sighted if you think you can ommit the comments to speed up things. You will always loose more time if you think of the long-run. Also, you are not alone - team-members can only follow if you comment the important thinking-steps.
A fourth way to make your code accessible is to refactor and test your code regularly. Refactoring is the process of improving your code by changing its structure, design, or functionality without changing its behavior or output. Testing is the process of verifying that your code works as expected and meets the requirements and specifications. By refactoring and testing your code, you can eliminate bugs, errors, redundancies, and complexity, and make your code more readable, reliable, and reusable. For example, you can use tools like pylint, flake8, or black for Python, or checkstyle, PMD, or spotbugs for Java, to analyze and refactor your code automatically or semi-automatically. You can also use frameworks like unittest, pytest, or nose for Python, or JUnit, TestNG, or Spock for Java, to write and run unit tests, integration tests, or functional tests for your code.
Refactor is something that I do when there is some moments for it. Sometimes refactoring reveils existing bugs. Sometimes refactoring helps to understand key-elements of your code better. It certainly is something that is very hard to legitimate since there is no feature-win in refactoring. And it is our duty to convice managers that refactoring is key not to accumulate technical dept.
A fifth way to make your code accessible is to use version control and collaboration tools to manage, share, and review your code with other developers. Version control is a system that tracks and records the changes and history of your code, and allows you to revert, merge, or branch your code as needed. Collaboration tools are platforms or applications that enable you to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate with other developers on your code projects. For example, you can use Git, SVN, or Mercurial as version control systems, and GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket as collaboration tools, to store, sync, and access your code repositories online, and to create issues, pull requests, or code reviews with other developers.
A sixth way to make your code accessible is to learn from others and seek feedback on your code. Learning from others means that you can read, study, and analyze the code of other developers who have more experience, knowledge, or skills than you, and learn from their techniques, solutions, and best practices. Seeking feedback means that you can ask for opinions, suggestions, or critiques from other developers who have different perspectives, backgrounds, or expertise than you, and improve your code based on their feedback. For example, you can use platforms like Stack Overflow, Code Review, or Reddit to ask or answer questions, share or review code snippets, or join discussions with other developers.