Have you ever read someone’s essay and thought to yourself, “Wow, the content is great, but they don’t know how to format their paragraphs or sentences”? If you’re not taking the time to organize your thoughts into paragraphs and fix the punctuation of your sentences, you’re simply wasting your readers’ time. It’s important to avoid run-on sentences and instead utilize commas and periods to indicate a short pause or the end of a thought. Rather than having a single lengthy paragraph, it’s beneficial to divide it into smaller paragraphs, each focusing on related ideas. Start each paragraph with an indent and use quotation marks to denote quoted phrases. By adhering to a standardized writing approach, you make it easier for your readers to follow along. The same principle applies to coding and is known as the coding standard—a set of rules dictating the formatting of your code.
Now that you understand the significance of having a coding standard, you can begin applying it to your code. You might be wondering, “Okay, I understand its importance, but how do I implement it?” The answer is simple: ESLint. ESLint is a plugin that enforces a coding standard and integrates with your IDE. It identifies formatting errors in your code and provides options to automatically fix them. By making your code more readable, ESLint saves time for you and your colleagues, especially when dealing with large codebases. Give it a try!
Personally, I find it invaluable to have ESLint installed in IntelliJ for writing JavaScript code. It conveniently marks any errors with an ‘x,’ highlighting the exact line that needs fixing. A dropdown menu offers options to automatically correct the errors. These errors can range from simple spacing issues to missing indentations or semicolons. Once all the errors are resolved, you’ll receive a reassuring check mark, indicating that your code meets the coding standards. I’m grateful that I no longer need to waste time manually formatting my code when ESLint can handle it for me.