6 good coding practices

Ignoring good coding practices can lead to subpar software that can break at any time, offer lower performance, or be difficult to update. And we certainly don't want something like that to happen.

If you've ever been around developers, you've probably heard disaster stories and inside jokes about poor coding practices. This can make you feel like bad code is imminent and that if you get into development you will encounter bad practices sooner or later. However, this doesn't have to be the case.

As these same developers could tell you, software development has a series of coding standards and practices that most of them are undoubtedly familiar with. They are included in software development courses, shared across development teams, or even learned in the wild. The main problem is that they are not standardized or formally formulated – they are tricks of the trade that developers are encouraged to follow to write good code.

The other problem is that many of them don't always follow these practices. For these developers, the only concern is making the final product work as expected, even if that means leaving out comments or ignoring peer reviews. In other words, the coding process involves only writing code that is acceptable – not writing good code. However, as we've pointed out, ignoring best practices can lead to subpar software that can break at any time, deliver lower performance, or be difficult to update.

This is why following good coding practices and guidelines is so important. They serve as standards to be followed throughout development to improve the final quality of the code. By adhering to them, software developers and development teams can make products work while giving those products better performance and more robust foundations for updating and updating them.

Why You Should Use Coding Best Practices

Using best practices seems intuitive – if it's a good thing, then you should definitely use it, right? Unfortunately, my experience has proven to me that this is not necessarily the case in the world of software development. As I mentioned before, many software developers sacrifice some of these practices to meet deadlines or lessen their workload.

However, the short-term gains a software developer might make by ignoring coding best practices pale in comparison to the benefits those developers could achieve if they actually adhered to them. Just a few of these benefits include:

Let's take a look at the main advantages of writing good code.

Better workflow

Following best practices speeds up all development processes because the entire team is on the same page about the work they are doing. Teams that follow these best practices have better communication, understand each other's roles, and are better equipped to prioritize work, making the entire lifecycle run much more smoothly.

Greater efficiency and productivity

When an entire team follows solid coding practices, everyone has a better overall understanding of the project, which leads to fewer instances of software glitches or errors and less need for constant fixes. This maximizes the efficiency of everything developers code, which ultimately translates into increased productivity.

Improved product quality

Peer reviews and code comments allow teams to identify bugs and issues early, allowing them to work on fixes before the product goes into production. This means there will be fewer problems in the future, which will ultimately translate into more efficient code, better performance, and a more stable product (which ultimately also means more robust software).

More organized work

Most development teams use management platforms to track the progress of their projects, but they can go beyond that using tags. Through them, a team can have a more organized file structure, all interconnected with the tasks at hand. This makes it easier for developers to find what they need to do at any given time, while also helping them better organize their work.

Reduced Costs

All of the above (greater efficiency and productivity, better workflow and higher product quality) converge towards this benefit. This is because a team governed by good coding practices and conventions spends less time fixing things and makes the most of the time working on a specific task.

Getting these five benefits should be reason enough to convince any developer or development team to adopt good or best coding practices. Even if developers don't care about organization or productivity, avoiding the frustration of having to deal with bugs and errors should be motivation enough to follow good practices.

Now that you understand the importance of good coding practices, let's review some essential ones.

6 Essential Coding Practices for Any Programming Language

Any experienced developer can point out that just six practices don't even begin to cover the spectrum of best practices you should be following. That may be true, but for the purposes of this article, these six practices are enough to establish a solid foundation through which you can achieve greater code quality. Plus, they're great for illustrating how important it is to write code the right way.

Without further ado, the top six essential coding practices include the following:

#1 Comments

When a developer works on their code, they follow a logic that is not always easy for others to follow (or, after some time, even for themselves!). This is why commenting code is such a good thing: it provides explanations of code snippets that can be useful to other developers who need to rework someone else's code later.

Comments are simple annotations whose sole purpose is to make it easier for anyone checking the code to understand exactly what the developer was trying to do. Many developers think it's a waste of time to write comments, but that's never the case. Even when comments seem redundant, they can serve a purpose, from reminding the developer of the logic behind a line of code to teaching beginning programmers how to write good code to illuminating the purpose behind it.

#2 Peer review

Another basic element of good coding standards, peer review, implies that all code written by a developer is always reviewed by someone else. This simple step allows developers to hand off their work to a new set of eyes who can more easily spot problems with the code and point them out before they become bigger problems.

Peer review should be a standard process on all types of projects, but its importance on larger, more complex projects cannot be underestimated. If a developer ends up merging code that has not been reviewed, they expose the entire project to potentially more significant issues that can increase costs and remediation efforts. That's why it's always best to foster collaboration between developers to review each other's code in the early stages of a project.

#3 Pull requests

A pull request happens whenever a developer informs the rest of the team about changes they have worked on that should be pushed to the main repository. You can think of a pull request system as an alert system in which developers inform each other that there is modified code that needs to be reviewed and discussed before being merged. In a way, pull requests combine comments and peer reviews into a single practice, even when they are not necessarily the same.

#4 Tags

One of the most overlooked practices in all of software development, including tags is (believe it or not) highly beneficial to the process. This is because using tags allows developers to quickly identify the different files they work with in a specific project. This way, they can access them more efficiently while improving their overall organization. Tags can also help identify features, bug fixes, and improvements, which ultimately leads to a sort of index of all the items covered in a specific project.

#5 Meaningful Naming Conventions

Naming conventions are useful for identifying and distinguishing classes, variables, types, and functions in source code. To write strong code for software projects, it's always a good idea to use descriptive language that defines what the code includes. Any developer should be able to read the names involved in someone else's code and understand what is contained within it.

This also contributes to better code readability. Additionally, it provides more information to the reader, promotes clarity, and reduces ambiguity.

#6 Don't repeat

Repetitive code, also called duplicate code or copy-paste code, is a block of code that occurs multiple times in your codebase. It's typically a problem that occurs when programmers work quickly, but it's also a case of sacrificing quality for speed. While it can be useful in some cases, you should try to keep it to a minimum.

One of the biggest problems with repetitive code is that it can lead to increased technical debt. Additionally, it can make your code more vulnerable to security threats and risks.

Meanwhile, focusing on unique code with minimal duplication leads to better readability, better testing capabilities, and stronger overall code.

Writing code, the right way

Our own experience leads us to be ardent advocates of best coding practices: we have seen their transformative power for software development. And that's why, while we appreciate a good joke or bad coding story, we always take good coding practices seriously – and why you should too.

Coding Best Practices FAQ

What are the benefits of good programming practices?

There are many benefits to good programming practices, including better workflows, increased efficiency and productivity, better product quality, more organized work, reduced costs, and less technical debt.

Why are coding standards important?

Coding standards are important because they lead to stronger, more stable designs and products that have fewer vulnerabilities and require less long-term maintenance. In contrast, one of the biggest risks of ignoring coding practices is that, although it may mean faster project recovery, it will lead to long-term problems such as excessive technical debt and vulnerable projects.

How can I learn good coding practices?

Beginner programmers and experienced programmers should take some time to learn coding conventions. To learn good coding practices, you can discuss code with other programmers, as members of your team or in large online communities, study other developers' projects, and read about best coding practices.