Declaring Independence🎉 from Bad Code Practices

Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash

It’s Independence Day! Rather than thinking about tea or something, let’s act like our Founding Fathers. We’re going to expunge our bad coding habits with a constitution of software development.

Don’t take this too seriously but do the things that I suggest people!

The Constitution

We, the coders act, in order to form a more perfect codebase, establish maintainability, and working functionality, promote documentation, and secure the blessings of clean code to ourselves and our colleagues, do ordain and establish this Constitution for Coders.

Article I: Spaghetti Code
Section 1: Spaghetti code shall be abolished.
Section 2: All functions shall be well-structured, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, and no more than 50 lines each, except in cases of supreme necessity.

Article II: Magic Numbers
Section 1: No magic number shall remain unexplained within the code.
Section 2: All numerical constants shall reside in clearly labelled variables or configuration files, documented for the understanding of all.

Article III: Commentless Code
Section 1: All code shall include comments where necessary to explain complex logic or intent.
Section 2: Comments shall not restate the obvious but shall provide clarity on the why behind the code.

Article IV: Monolithic Methods
Section 1: Monolithic methods that do more than one thing shall be banished and divided.
Section 2: Functions shall adhere to the single responsibility principle, ensuring each function accomplishes one and only one task.

Article V: Poor Naming Conventions
Section 1: Variables, functions, and classes shall bear names that clearly describe their purpose.
Section 2: Names such as temp and foo are hereby banned from use.

Article VI: Hardcoding
Section 1: Hardcoded values shall be eradicated from the codebase.
Section 2: All dynamic values shall be managed through configuration files or environment variables, ensuring flexibility and adaptability.

Article VII: Copy-Paste Coding
Section 1: The practice of copying and pasting code without understanding shall cease.
Section 2: Code reuse shall be achieved through the creation of reusable, modular components.

Article VIII: Ignoring Error Handling
Section 1: All code shall include proper error handling mechanisms.
Section 2: Errors shall be logged appropriately, and fallback solutions provided where necessary.

Article IX: Over-Engineering
Section 1: Simplicity shall be the guiding principle of all code.
Section 2: Overly complex solutions shall be avoided in favor of elegant, efficient designs.

Article X: Code Reviews
Section 1: Code reviews shall be embraced as a necessary and beneficial process.
Section 2: Constructive feedback shall be given and received with the goal of improving code quality for all.

Conclusion

Disagree with any of the articles above? 

That’s treason (or something).

Because remember together we can build a programming nation of clean, maintainable and efficient code.

Oh, happy Independence Day!