Code Smell 48 — Code Without Standards

Working on a solo project is easy. Unless you go back to it after some months. Working with many other developers requires some agreements.

Problems

• Maintainability
• Readability

Solutions

1. Automate your styles and indentation.
2. Enforce agreed policies.

Sample Code

Wrong

Correct sample taken from Sandro Mancuso’s bank kata

Right

The right example has several other smells, but we keep it loyal to its GIT version in order to show only code standardization issues.

Detection

Linters and IDEs should test coding standards before a merge request is approved.

We can add our own naming conventions related to Objects, Classes, Interfaces, Modules etc.

Examples

• PSR2

Tags

• Standardization

Conclusion

Use coding standards in your projects.

A well-written clean code always follows standards about naming conventions, formatting and code style.

Such standards are helpful because they make things clear and deterministic for the ones who read your code, including yourself.

Code styling should be automatic and mandatory on large organizations to enforce Collective Ownership.

Relations

Code Smell 06 — Too Clever Programmer

More info

What exactly is a name? — Part I: The Quest

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

Andrew S. Tannenbaum

Software Engineering Great Quotes

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky parts of your Code