OCD Intensifies
11 Feb 2021OCD Intensifies
I love the coding standards
To most, coding standards can be a hastle. The squiggly lines and magnitude of errors appearing on the bottom of their screens drives them up the wall. I, on the other hand, love formatting my code to meet standard requirements. Personally, I like to think of the coding standards like auto correct on my phone; my best friend and worst nightmare. The standards keep code formatted in a percise way that forces the user into good habits.
As a sloppy programmer myself, the standards keep me in line and prevent me from naming all my variables different variations of x or y. Also as someone who constantly fat-fingers my keyboard, the standards catch my errors in spelling far too often. It’s a good tool to passively correct mistakens that are normally overlooked. For example, in the WOD’s I find myself doing practically daily, I am a chronic semicolon forgetter. At first, I would just click on the lines to jump to the spot I forgot to put a semicolon, but after constantly finding myself going back into the code, I’ve gotten into the habit of putting one in at the end of the line before being told the code is bust.
I love it but hate it
I have this love-hate relationship with coding standards. However, I do believe that my hatred towards the standards are really just growing pains. Getting into the flow state of programming where I get so lost into the program that all formalities go out the windows. Once I leave this flow state, I look up at what i just wrote and realize that there are a million and one errors in the form of squiggly lines and green checkmarks. Although I am grateful that the standards will provide me with a guideline on formatting, sometimes I just want to get into the groove and not have to worry about the format. To others, they may also resonate with my pain and our commonly spent time going through each error to correct it.
Conclusion
Overall, I do like coding standards and god do I also really hate them. They are a good learning tool for people getting into programming for the first time. It helps organize the thought process of a program, yet acts as an english teacher correcting every error before you can even finish the thought. If WOD’s weren’t timed then I’d probably be more inclined to follow the coding standards from the get-go. However, I do strongly believe that everyone should follow some kind of industry standard.