Clean Code Cookbook

Chapter 9. Standards

The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. Furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year’s model.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, Fourth Edition

9.0 Introduction

In large organizations, it is important to have code conventions to ensure that different teams and developers are working with a common set of rules and best practices. This can help to ensure that code is consistent and easy to understand, which can make it easier to work with and maintain, and also helps to improve the overall quality of the codebase. By enforcing a set of coding standards, organizations can ensure that developers are following best practices and writing code that is more likely to be reliable, scalable, and maintainable.

9.1 Following Code Standards

Problem

You work on a large codebase with many other developers. You need to read all the code with the same structure and conventions but there are many mixed standards.

Solution

Follow the same standards across the organization and enforce them (automatically if you can).

Discussion

Working on a solo project is easy unless you go back to it after some months. Working with many other developers requires some agreements. Following common code standards favors maintainability and readability and helps code reviewers. Most modern languages have common code standards like PSR2 in PHP, and most modern IDEs enforce them automatically.

In this example, you can ...