Five signs in the source code that show your developer team needs improving

Need your team to improve its software development skills? Have you or your team experienced software security issues? In this article, we show you five signs to identify if your team needs to improve its software development skills and what you can do.

Understanding the problem

Software quality is essential for everyone, but foremost for software factories which depend on their products to grow.

If you are the owner of a software factory or a team leader, you may have experienced business problems due to poor software quality.

To identify if this is your case, we provide you with five signs that may help you make better business decisions for your team and your company.

The five signs

You will not necessarily find the five signs in all the members of your team. Seeing only one of these signs in less than 50% of the team members may not be a worrying symptom. However, the presence of one—and only one sign—in all the team members, as well as finding more than one sign in two or more of them, will require urgent attention.

Sign 1: A careless writing style in the source code

A sloppy writing style in the source code is rarely something of no importance. In general, it is a matter derived from a deeper problem, such as an unclear solution or a trial and error one.

When the source code is a transcript from an algorithm, it could mean the coders do not have sufficient information to do that translation or the know-how to do it better. However, if no such algorithm design exists, the problem is more profound because it indicates an unreasoned decision.

Sign 2: Source code that needs to be explained

Sometimes, this is because of the use of non-descriptive names in the code. However, even by giving descriptive names, the code could be incomprehensible and you could be experiencing a design error.

Sign 3: Dependency increasing

Lots of coders decide to solve a programming problem by using third-party libraries. Those libraries are often really useful, but many others are unnecessary and increase software insecurity.

Sign 4: Lack of unit and integration testing

Not all coders know how to write tests. And not all coders who know how to do it or have the proper know-how. Unit testing is essential to avoid bugs and measure software performance, while integration testing is essential to increase software functionality. A code without tests is software which cannot offer a feasible proof of quality.

Sign 5: Non-reusable code, code redundancy and complex maintainability

This is a three-in-one sign. When you cannot reuse a portion of the software code (and you need it), you have to write the same or similar code again. If you have more than one block of code doing the same, or equivalent, thing, you get complex software to maintain. How many times can you find the same code in the same program? How many files do you need to modify when you need to change only one thing? It is not a sign of wrong code, but actually, a programming issue.

What can you do to solve the problem?

There are several ways to tackle the problems. However, it would be helpful to remember that any of these signs indicate that your team needs improvement. Your goal should be to make the optimal decision to achieve that improvement. Tackle just a particular symptom or “putting a patch” on it will not resolve the underlying problem.

Remember, what you invest today to professionally grow your team is what you earn tomorrow on the high-quality software developed by them.

In the following section, we will provide you with some best practices your team could implement to aim for better results.

If you need further assistance or a targeted solution for your team, we would love to help you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Best practices for developer teams

The following short guide may help your team to write better software.

1. Define a style guide for the code or use a well-defined one, such as the Python Enhancement Proposal N°8 (PEP 8). It could help coders to write careful code.
2. Ensure your team members know and understand the difference between coding and programming. Do they design the solution by thinking of the problem to solve? Do they actually know how to write code starting from an algorithm? If unsure, a training course on logic to software engineering could be an excellent choice.
3. Most software dependencies can be avoided by understanding how computers work. An introductory course on the fundamentals of computers may help a lot.
4. Learning to design unit tests with mathematical models is the cheaper and optimal choice to keep a code safe. We have an excellent training program at Oubeeker?.
5. Modularity is perhaps the best way to reuse code, avoid redundancy and reduce software maintenance complexity. Here is a good reading from Stanford University to understand modular design in software engineering.

Conclusions

It is essential to understand that the source code style and structure may help us to detect underlying problems in the development team.

The internet is an excellent place to learn but also a terrible one! Programmers can get information from the wrong sources and take it as a great choice. But this can result in a terrible software engineering decision, affecting the software quality.

Pay attention to the sources consulted by the team. Always ask to be sure and never forget that what you invest in today to grow your team is what you earn tomorrow when they apply what they have learned.