Consistency is the way
21 Sep 2016
Indentation, placement of curly-braces, selection from either tab or space, when I first thought about all these coding standards, it was just received to me as one of the areas that needed to be respected depending on writer’s own preference. However, the when the issue of readability came, somehow it changed my perspective of personal preference. Thanks to the many developing tools and code editors that display the errors and matchings of curly-braces and many other features, it is not difficult to follow along few lines of codes but when the lines codes start to increase, still readability issues could appear. So, it is always good to open to any kinds of standardized coding conventions and I believe that this will be helpful not only the to improve quality of writing, reading, speed, and efficiency of codes but also to be loved and recognized by the people we will be meeting and working with in the areas involve codings.
Moving on to my personal experience, one of my personal preferences for using curly-braces for functions, if-else statements or any kind of curly-braces using cases was to put them in a new line, not in same line. Despite the advantages of using same line, which saves lines, spaces, and amount of codes displayed with less scrolling, new line curly-bracing is the one that used to and comfortable with, so when ESLint with Intellij was introduced and I had to start using it, I was irritated by the ESLint’s red warning marks about new line curly-braces, indenting and other style related red marks. However, as time went by, I started feel comfortable getting green marks for convention-wise warnings and I was able to see my small changes in coding style made my code’s readability significantly better when it started to contain many lines.
To sum up, standard coding styles might seen as minor factor to improve quality of your skills in coding and considered as personal preference matter, but it could be one of the good factors to improve readability and relationships with people who are working in coding related areas.