Coding standards are a very interesting part of ICS. The standards themselves are’nt strictly required for your program to function as it is supposed to. Instead they are mostly around to make your code look nicer and to make it easier to understand. I remember learning in my ICS 212 class that when coding was still relatively new and computers were not that powerful it was more important to create code that was as concise as you could possibly make it. Fewer lines of code meant less processing power required to run the code. But now computers are many times more powerful, so it is a lot more useful to create code that is easy to read.
One of the obvious benefits of Coding Standards is that it makes your code a lot easier to understand if you adhere to them. The lines will be properly spaced and you’ll always know which brackets belong to which function. Another benefit of Coding Standards is that it helps you to become a better coder. Since it makes you code a certain way it ingrains the habits of the coding standards into you and even if you are on a text editor you will be inclined to use the same standards you are used to.
The coding standards that we’re using, that is ESlint on Intellij idea, have great functionality compared to other programs (ie. eclipse). One of the functions I like about the programs that we’re using is that it, for the most part, tells you how to fix the errors that you’re getting. Just today on the WOD I learned how to concatenate strings in a different way due to an error that I got. So now because of ESlint I have another tool at my disposal when I write code.
Overall I really like the coding standards and the programs that we are using in this class. Intellij Idea is already my favorite environments to code in. I’m very glad that I learned about these great programs.