First Impressions with ESLint
17 Jan 2024My thoughts on ESLint
After programming with ESLint for a week creating small javascript programs, I found ESLint to be very easy and convenient to use, taking at most a minute to get opertaional on my repositories. For a typical programmer in javascript, I think that they would find that most ESLint errors they encounter are very minor and can be be fixed by the built in autofix program for ESLint, resulting in them not having to spend too much time manually fixing errors so that it adheres to the coding standard. For very small programs that are only a few functions, coding standards don’t seem to be useful, however, for any project with a bit more scope, I think coding standards really show what their worth. For example, ESLint highlights what functions and variables are not used, problematic blocks of code that could lead to logic errors, defining scope, and much more.
Coding Standards
As a result, I think that coding standards are indispensable for anyone serious in software engineering because of how adhering to a coding standard makes code easier to read, scale, and maintain, which are essential for working on a large project with other programmers. From what I know about professional programming, people can work projects that have tens of thousands of lines of code, with hundreds of contributors. Coding standards make it so that everyone’s code would be uniform in how they are formatted, created in a way that won’t potentially interfere with other people’s contributions, and prevent common errors from code. When I conversed with some founders of startups during an event, they gave me insight in how having less than optimal code was often preferable for businesses if it meant that maintaining the code was easier, meaning someone with less technical expertise could read code and improve on code written years ago by people no longer working on the project.
