Death by Coding Standards

26 Sep 2024

Coding is notorious for attention to detail and even more notorious for simple errors rendering code broken. Add coding standards on top of that and we have an academic and occupational nightmare. Coding standards are nothing new when it comes to the various programming languages, yet regardless of AI technological innovations, the little things stump every programmer at some point.

Coding standards are one of the most important software engineering techniques to create successful code. However, the coding standards for every single different programming language is particularly dreadful in learning a new language. Sure, they may help in learning languages, but with all of them in your head, it seems redundant to learn the same code for different languages with different coding standards.

After being exposed to ESLint with VS Code in my ICS 314 class, I found getting rid of all the errors very frustrating. Simply too many spaces or a lack of a new line is enough to produce an error. Regardless of the eye roll inducing errors, I understand the importance of being able to fix errors, learn how languages differ, and what created the error in the first place so as to not make the same mistakes again.