Coding Standards are Tedious but Important

26 Sep 2019

Coding Standards and Their Effects

Coding standards are rules that create a standard for how code should be written, and although some people think of coding standards as tedious, I happen to enjoy coding standards. They give a sense of uniformity to code that makes collaboration seamless. Coding standards also make code more readable, which makes code easier to debug both for yourself and others. All in all coding standards make writing code more efficient and easier. By making code easier to read, understand and debug, coding standards can save the time of the programmers working on projects and save companies money that can be put towards other projects.

How Coding Standards Can Affect Your Own Code.

I remember when I took ICS 111 and learned how to code for the first time, I made a program to calculate things for me on my math homework for fun. However, since I was new to coding I did not get why coding standards were necessary in class, and I made all of my projects without adhering to any coding standards. I wrote the whole program on one line and used only used space if I needed to. When I looked back at that side project later it took a few minutes to figure out what I coded and what my program was doing. This is when I first realized the importance of coding standards and it has helped me become a more efficient programmer.

What I think of Coding Standards?

When I first began coding I did not understand the importance of coding standards and how they affected the efficiency of code. I failed to see how indenting, adding spaces and putting code onto a newline could drastically affect the readability of my code. However, I have come to like and understand the necessity for using coding standards as a way to better the code you are writing and make it easier for others to understand your code and to make collaboration easier amongst peers. Coding standards are now in my opinion one of the best ways to make coding better for yourself and your fellow programmers.