Importance of Coding Standards in Software development

Before jump into coding standards, Let's talk a little bit about coding.

Coding, the soul of every software defines the overall performance of a software application. There are many software engineers who code for various platforms and applications by using a programming language. Since years, programming has been evolving itself to meet up to the customer requirements and changing needs.

But, what has slowly changed the programming era is the advancement and compliance with the ‘Coding Standards’. Yes, the coding standards have great importance in creating a well-framed and clean coding system. This certainly ensures better code understanding along with a fine logic implementation and of course determines better software product quality.

Why coding standards are important in Software Development?

If the coding standards are not defined, developers could be using any of their own methods, which might lead to certain negative effects such as:

1. Security Concerns
Software becomes vulnerable to attacks if it is inconsistent, contains bugs and errors in logic. Most of the aforementioned problems arise due to the faulty programming code that might have resulted from poor coding practices.

2. Performance Issues
Poor coding has an adverse effect on the performance of the site. The performance issues comprise a multitude of things like when the user is interacting with the site, server response issues, reusability & flow of the code, etc.

When the coding standards are implemented, these problems can be easily overcome giving you a secure site with minimum or no performance issues.

While formulating a code, the Basic Coding Conventions should be kept in mind

Let’s understand this in detail and take a walk through to basics of it by first knowing the coding conventions and then reading through the coding standards.

1. Comment Conventions: It is a good practice to comment while writing code. It helps other developers to understand your code. For every module or block of code, you should write the purpose of the block at the beginning within a comment section. The comment syntax varies for all languages and keeps the code manageable anytime.

2. Indent Style Conventions: It is advisable to make use of indentation while writing the code. Indent style in a programming language is the code structure. Most of the programming languages have a dedicated structure(as a cascade) that makes nesting and conditions distinguishable through the structure. However, a consistent indentation style should be followed throughout the code. The following example shows how loops and conditions are placed. Here, For loop is a tab space inside the main, and similarly the if statement is a tab space inside for loop.

3. Naming Conventions: Naming conventions are a set of rules for declaring variables and constants. Follow proper naming convention while naming any variable, function or page.

• Do not use Special Character or space in any name.
• Always start a class name with Capital Letter.
• Always start Local Variable name / Page / Function name in small letters.
• Try to avoid using numbers in naming, But logically you can use numbers.
• When declaring a constant variable, It must be all uppercase with words separated by underscores(“_”).

4. Line Length Conventions: Tall and narrow columns are easy to be read and seem comfortable to the eyes. It is therefore advised to use short line lengths, whereas many coding languages allow a specific number of characters per line. Recently, the programming languages are working on keeping it more flexible. Already, HTML has put a word wrap feature that allows more characters per line.

5. Grouping Code Conventions: It is better to group the tasks in different blocks/functions of code separating them with proper space. You can add a comment at the starting of every block.

Here I'm grouping it by selection and non-selection operation.

6. Refactoring code conventions: This is done to enhance the readability of the code without modifying the basic functionality of the code. Some compilers are providing this code refactor option.

Coding Standards and Best Practices

1. Clearly define the varied data and its uses before writing the code.
2. Code while keeping the coding conventions in place.
3. Understand code integrity
4. Code ethically
5. Update the code according to the latest updates and conventions at regular time intervals.

Benefits of Coding Standards

1. Makes code integration cleaner and easier
2. Helps in team integration
3. Saves a lot of time during maintenance
4. Eases problem-solving
5. Minimizes the need to communicate for even simpler things
6. Enhances performance and throughput
7. Reduces overhead on money and resources

Conclusion:

• Even any fool can learn and write programming that a machine can understand, But only a good programmer can write a program that humans can understand.
• Think Twice Write Once.