You're starting a new project. How can you manage your code more effectively? Whether you're working solo or in a team, keeping your code organized, readable, and maintainable is essential for a successful outcome. In this article, you'll learn some practical tips and tools to help you manage your code more effectively.
A coding style is a set of rules and conventions that define how you write and format your code. It covers aspects such as indentation, spacing, naming, comments, and structure. Choosing a coding style and sticking to it can help you write consistent and clear code that is easy to read and debug. You can use a coding style guide, such as PEP 8 for Python or Google Java Style Guide, or create your own based on your preferences and project needs. You can also use tools like linters and formatters to check and enforce your coding style automatically.
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A mature developer follows the coding standards of their programming language, enhancing team readability and comprehension. While custom guidelines are feasible, adherence to established standards is preferred. Linters help maintain these standards, improving coding efficiency. However, understanding the rules by yourself is always beneficial.
When starting a project, select a coding style like PEP 8 or Google Java Style to maintain consistency in code formatting, naming, and structure. Customization based on project requirements is an option. Employ tools like linters and formatters to automate style enforcement, aiding readability and debugging. Adhering to a unified style fosters collaboration, streamlines maintenance, and ensures effective code management.
I would suggest to kick off by establishing a robust folder structure keep the functionality separated from UI and do not forget to use linters such as ESlint.
In my experience, it's best to start by selecting a good IDE based on the programming language you want to code in. We can install a code style plugin, Code quality check plugin, Unit tests Plugin, and Docker-related plugins. These come in very handy when one is starting a new project. Version control is the most important part, Git is the most used, and all IDEs support it and provide all types of APIs to Git. Committing all meaningful full code changes on a timely basis with proper comments helps manage the project over time. Adding comments wherever possible would be a very good idea as the project grows, comments would be very effective to read and understand for the new collaborators
As the coders get replaced periodically, I'll emphasize on writing code in such way that it'll have very understanding comments to understand the purpose of its targetted behaviour when the code was written because whenever a new person is going to analyse the code can get a different meaning or have slow start to understand the code. So if it's commented well it can help better in documentation as well. This is one of my angle to write code.
Version control is a system that tracks and records the changes you make to your code over time. It allows you to save, restore, compare, and merge different versions of your code, as well as collaborate with other developers. Version control can help you manage your code more effectively by preventing data loss, enabling experimentation, facilitating feedback, and improving documentation. Some of the most popular version control systems are Git, Subversion, and Mercurial. You can use tools like GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab to host and manage your version control repositories online.
Version control should be mandatory for any size of project. And while using any version control, there should be multiple branches for multiple environments (ex: dev, stage, playground, production) The commit message must be meaningful and detailed and there should be a separate branch for a new push. These branches must be targeted to be merged with dev (in most scenarios) based on PR approvals. The mentioned above schemes should be practiced while using version control.
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Understanding version control is essential for every developer and development team. GitHub stands out as a premier tool for version control and code management within teams, offering several key advantages: - Branching and Merging - Track Changes - Open Source Community
Don't be afraid to have messy commit history in the beginning - while we'd all love a clean history, the most important thing is that your code's evolution is committed somewhere, and you can go back and see how you got to where you are today.
Version control tracks code changes over time, vital for collaboration. Git, Subversion, and Mercurial are popular systems. GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab host these repositories online. Bitbucket integrates with Slack and Jira, streamlining workflow. Version control ensures organized, efficient development, enabling teams to collaborate effectively and maintain code integrity.
Version control is a crucial aspect of any project, especially in software development. It helps keeping a detailed account for every modification, ensures that changes are trackable and reversible and minimizes the chance of changes overlapping.
Modular code is code that is divided into smaller and independent units, such as functions, classes, or modules. Modular code can help you manage your code more effectively by making it easier to understand, reuse, test, and debug. You can write modular code by following the principles of cohesion and coupling. Cohesion means that each unit of code should have a single and clear purpose, and coupling means that the units of code should have minimal dependencies and interactions with each other. You can use tools like import statements, packages, or namespaces to organize and access your modular code.
Breaking a program into self-contained units, modular code improves readability and facilitates collaboration. It enhances maintainability by isolating modifications, supports project scalability, and facilitates efficient testing. Encapsulation ensures a distinct separation of concerns, contributing to an orderly and dependable development process.
Something that often gets overlooked about modularisation is the softer benefits, concise and standardised code blocks give developers the ability to easily visualise and diagram out their solution before even touching the keyboard, these can then be used for collaboration, planning and refinement. Testing and modularisation have a symbiotic relationship in which improving one will generally help to improve the other, but something worth noting is how modularisation can help your build system work smarter and faster for you e.g. a fully modularised Grade project will automatically run tests only in the the modified module, and it's dependants.
It is very useful to divided the code into helper classes or make "generic" classes or methods (reusable procedures) to avoid the the extra and duplicated code for your project. But if a developer decides to follow the modular code, has to keep it clear, with good naming. The benefit for this, its make the project readable and clear to understand, easier to test and easier to maintain.
When it comes to writing modular code, there are several practical tools that developers can use to make help in writing the code effectively and efficiently. They include unit testing frameworks, dependency management tools, version control systems, Agile methodologies, and static code analysis. Each tool provides specific functionality to decompose complex systems into smaller, more manageable units. With these tools, developers can ensure that code is easily supportable, reusable, and scalable, leading to higher quality software systems. Thus, by utilizing such pragmatic tools throughout the software system's life cycle, developers can produce modular code that is highly cohesive and loosely coupled.
You don't want to rebuild from scratch every time something needs a tweak. That's why modular code is so important. Modules are like Lego blocks that you can move around and reuse as needed. In my experience with modular code: - You can easily make changes - You can reuse code across projects - You can handle more complex code It's like building a house with modular walls instead of bricks.
Documenting your code is the process of adding explanatory comments, annotations, or metadata to your code to describe its purpose, functionality, parameters, inputs, outputs, and dependencies. Documenting your code can help you manage your code more effectively by making it easier to comprehend, maintain, and communicate. You can document your code by following the standards and conventions of your programming language, such as docstrings in Python or Javadoc in Java. You can also use tools like Sphinx, Doxygen, or JSDoc to generate documentation files from your code.
Documentation for your codebase is necessary Because it helps the new comer to grab the things very easily in documentation also define steps to run the environment & the architecture and coding standards this will help to win win
It’s super important to have proper documentation for your project and also to mark sure that if someone else if referring a part of your code then they should be able to understand what it does really well. In order to accomplish that add comments and use the standardised way of adding comments. For example if you are using JSDocs then it should highlight what’s the: 1. Return type 2. What arguments the function is accepting 3. How should a particular function be used and invoked 4. An example usage
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Every Code transitions through stages where: - It is transferred between developers. - New features are added, despite using outdated packages. - Continuous maintenance is required. Navigating these challenges becomes more difficult without well-documented code. Again, when documenting, it's essential to follow best practices to ensure the documentation is neither too brief nor excessively detailed, avoiding confusion and maintaining clarity.
Documenting your code is critical for successful code management. Explanatory comments, annotations, and metadata help to describe your code's purpose, functionality, inputs, outputs, and dependencies. This makes your code easier to comprehend, maintain, and discuss with your team or community. Follow your programming language's standards and norms, such as docstrings in Python or Javadoc in Java, to guarantee consistency and readability. You may also use tools like Sphinx, Doxygen, or JSDoc to automatically produce detailed documentation files from your project. Consistent and detailed documentation improves collaboration, debugging, and overall project quality.
Many people feel documentation as a lazy task. Over documenting or no documenting won't help in understanding codebases. - We should document the goal, purpose and functionalities implemented in the codebase. -Use inline comments sparingly to explain complex code segments or important decisions. -Maintain a comprehensive README file outlining project details, setup instructions, and usage guidelines. -Document external dependencies, environment variables, and any configuration needed. - If building an API, then document API endpoints and usage for external consumers. - Keep a version history or changelog to track significant changes made during each release.
Testing your code is the process of verifying that your code behaves as expected and meets the requirements and specifications of your project. Testing your code can help you manage your code more effectively by ensuring its quality, reliability, and performance. You can test your code by using different types and levels of testing, such as unit testing, integration testing, or functional testing. You can also use tools like pytest, JUnit, or Selenium to automate and run your tests.
Regarding testing a codebase, there are two groups: - 1. They don't write a single unit test 2. They write unnecessary tests just to say I've written lots of tests! Like testing an interface, testing a dto constructor, that provides 0.01% value. You have to find the balance. Unit/integration testing business heavy modules, like the application or business layer of an application is crucial! Again, you should not forget if you are building a simple calculator, why are you even writing tests?
The coding and automation should go hand in hand to achieve best code quality and lesser production bugs. One can utilise pipelines to run unit tests with every merge request or run regression automation suites for integration testing.
Probar el código asegura su adecuación a expectativas y requisitos del proyecto, abarcando pruebas unitarias, de integración, funcionales, de esfuerzo para evaluar el rendimiento bajo carga, y de ciberseguridad para verificar la protección frente a vulnerabilidades. Herramientas como pytest, JUnit o Selenium facilitan la automatización de estas pruebas, esenciales para mantener la calidad, fiabilidad, rendimiento y seguridad del software.
Testing everything isn't necessary. Instead, focus on understanding your business area rather than the specifics of how it's implemented. Create strong test plans and scenarios based on your business needs, which stay the same even as the technical details change. Remember, your business remains consistent even when the way it's implemented changes.
Testing is a mindset. It is not necessary to do it and a lot of developers don't do testing and everyone has their reasons. But testing your code helps a lot in early bug-catching and fixing it. Everyone should adopt it because you don't have to check the functionality manually every time.
Refactoring your code is the process of improving your code's design, structure, and readability without changing its functionality. Refactoring your code can help you manage your code more effectively by eliminating errors, redundancies, complexities, and inefficiencies. You can refactor your code by applying various techniques and patterns, such as extracting variables, renaming identifiers, simplifying expressions, or introducing polymorphism. You can also use tools like PyCharm, Eclipse, or Visual Studio Code to assist you with refactoring your code.
Refactoring is like a marathon, not a sprint. You refactor some code today & tomorrow you wake up with a better idea than today. Or after a month, you learn something that is actually a far better implementation than current. As long as you are honest on yourself, you are not intentionally making it look garbage, it should be fine. Peers you work on the same team sometimes can help you refactor better as different people have different perspectives. Stay open to their feedback.
Rich set of IDEs and code review tools definitely help us eliminate most of the code inefficiencies these days. Being a back-end developer I would suggest that Instead of putting everything in a single class, structure or divide your code into interfaces, utility, service and implementation classes which can help accommodate changes easily later. Knowledge of design patterns would be the advantage. In my experience, ultimately the performance of your code matters.
This is describing a *successful* refactor. It is very possible for a refactor to lead to worse results. Sometimes a more elegant solution can lead to worse DX. Sometimes applying a design pattern is unnecessary and just feels like a case of premature optimization. Most refactors are fairly straightforward, but when doing a massive overhaul, it's good to know how to do something and better to know when to do it.
You can think the code refactoring as part of a project lifecycle which can be beneficial for your project as it can make some parts in the code more clean and readable. Based on my experience using Android Studio. IDEs nowadays helping on that by highlighting and suggesting improvements in the code. Not all suggestions are good in my opinion as they might minimizing the code and they look clever. But when you come back to that code after certain amount of time you might not be able to understand what it does. So, is good to think twice before you proceed with the refactoring in that case.
In code colaboration, it’s important that everyone uses the same formaters with same options. With git you can manage most of this with precommits and editorconfig/ide config files.
Effective code management is crucial for project success. Start by using version control systems like Git, your project's time machine, enabling easy backtracking and understanding of changes. Integrate CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment, keeping your code shipshape. Beyond tools, foster a mindset of small, frequent commits, meticulous documentation, and collaborative code reviews. This not only enhances code quality but also boosts team synergy. Avoid the pitfalls that lead to the 75% failure rate by adopting these practices. Happy coding!
When initiating a project, regular code reviews and feedback sessions are crucial for maintaining quality and addressing issues promptly. Prioritizing features ensures that development efforts focus on delivering the most valuable functionalities aligned with project goals and user needs.
It's a very good practice also to apply the deveoped codes to static analysis tools, aiming to find out if some hard-to-find mistakes in the code gone unnoticed in the code development phase. As an example, for general coding mistakes finding in C and C++ codes, a good call is to use cppcheck. Another example, for deeper analysis aiming to find memory leaks and invalid memory position accesses (issues that can lead to very dangerous troubles when software goes to the field), valgrind is an excellent tool to use.
Deploy often, invest in continuous deployment of the main branch from the beginning and deploy continuously. Optimize your infra for delivery, do not optimize too much your infra for performance or cost saving. Pick a PAAS if that help you delive quickly.
As a Senior Software Engineer, effective code management is key when starting a new project. Utilize a version control system like Git to track changes, create branches for new features, and merge them back when ready. Adhere to good coding practices, write clean, readable code, use comments for clarity, and enforce a consistent coding style with a linter. Regular code reviews can further ensure code quality.