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Best Practices for a coder to enhance their programming skills

Write Clean, Readable, and High-Quality Code

As programmers, usually write code most of the time. Programmers often remove, add and modify code lines of their projects codebase. Those source code modifications both improve and worsen codebase. They have always need to improve codebases with high-quality, bug-free code. Following a well-defined coding style guide is undoubtedly mandatory. If your project still does not have a coding style guide, you can always suggest a well-accepted one.

Software development is a collaborative activity. Some programmers often work with the same piece of code collaboratively. Many programmers can apply patches quickly for complex source codes that were written by someone else. On the other hand, few programmers struggle with complex source code. Therefore, need to write self-explanatory code even if you are implementing an absolutely complex logic. The correct design patterns, module decompositions, directory structures, help us to write clean code. For instance, see how the Chromium team organized the browser’s UI controllers to reduce the complexity.

Follow the Performance-First Way

Programmers have to write much better code to impress hardware and other programmers (by writing clean code). They have to write code that will perform well in time and space factors to impress hardware. There are indeed many approaches to solve the same software engineering problem. The performance-first way motivates and select the most practical and well-performing solution. Performance is still vital regardless of modern hardware because accumulated minor performance issues may affect badly for the whole software system in the future.

Implementing hardware-friendly solutions requires computer science fundamentals knowledge. The reason is that computer science fundamentals teach us about how to use the right data structures and algorithms. Selecting for the right data structures or algorithms is the key to success behind every complex software engineering project. Many performance problems could stay hidden codebase. Our aim should be to apply performance patches when you spot such a problem always.

Write readable code
As stated by Martin Fowler, any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. Performance-first programming is underrated in the modern world due to powerful computers. But computation power is still limited. Continuous learning is the most important practice to become an expert in the programming field. A good programmer should write code that is readable and understandable such as

• It will help for debug your code easily
• It will allow other developers to understand your code effortlessly.

Master Your Project’s Domain

Programmers usually work with many sorts of software projects. Each software project may belong to different domains like healthcare, cloud computing, ecommerce, education and business processes. There is always a limitation skill enhancement process if you are limited to one software project. For another words, if you know every bit or piece of your project after working for many years ago, your everyday development routine will become a piece of cake unless you aren’t working with new things.

Mastering the project’s domain opens doors to new learning opportunities. Someone could argue that domain knowledge is needed only for business analysts and not for developers. But, it isn’t possible to do programming properly if see the whole software system’s process as an abstract system. To understand for either technical architecture or domain, the entire software development process becomes crystal clear. Programmers can come up with complete solutions when they become more familiar with the project’s domain. That means no one will solve something better without studying its domain.

Dive Deeper into the Project’s Architecture

In currently, there are various software architecture patterns. Layered, client-server, plug-in and pub or sub architecture are common software design patterns used. Software architects often decompose the entire project into subprojects to reduce complexity and achieve higher maintainability factors. In most scenarios, programmers do not need to understand every bit and piece of the software project’s architecture to contribute to the project. Nevertheless, programmers have to understand the software systems architecture better to add significant contributions.

The software systems usually need to have frequent architectural upgrades or improvements based on new requirements. For instnace, when your Software as a service (SAAS) product gets new users from different countries, you will have to integrate Content delivery networks (CDNs). Knowing the existing architecture better will help to suggest significant architectural enhancements to the project. It is great to study the project’s architecture to a level where you can explain high-level architecture to someone.