When software developers don’t care about producing a good code all the environment tends to be impacted by the consequences. Bad code leads to a stressful environment full of bugs where you don’t have time for you and your family. That’s why we will explore the 7 steps to avoid this problem.
1 – Be a Reference
If you need your team to produce a high-quality code, you must be a reference. It doesn’t matter if you are not the team leader; we can take the lead of anything without a title for the greater benefit. Share your knowledge with the team you work with, show them new programming techniques. Motivate them to be thirsty for more knowledge so that they can study by themselves. If your team admires your work, certainly they will be more willing to be like you.
2 – Show them the wasted time to fix a simple bug
How much time have we spent trying to find/fix a bug when the code was really bad? Much time indeed, it may have lasted for one or two days or maybe one week? Yes, this is the impact of producing a bad code. How many times did we have to find out what was the meaning of a variable or method because of poor names that don’t mean anything? We have to be detectives sometimes to find out what is happening.
Show them a giant do it all method and make them realize how stressful is to fix a bug under those conditions. That’s why we have to know how to convince and influence the team to use the best programming practices. We must show them the price we pay when a bad code is produced.
3 – Don’t be arrogant
Many developers fall into this mistake of being arrogant. It’s very unlikely you will be able to influence people by being arrogant. People tend to be defensive when they are treated in a bad way and they won’t trust you or follow your leads. So, it’s simple, you must be the opposite, have the attitude of supporting your team without being too harsh. Show them the right path to follow.
4 – Show them how rewarding it is to write high-quality code
What if we had written bad code? Certainly, we would waste much time until we could understand what is happening. It’s very rewarding when we see the code after some time and we are able to understand everything. If we put more effort when writing a code, everyone wins. As we know, we spend 10 times as much time reading bad code than writing a high-quality code one.
5 – Use a quality-code tool
Tools like PMD/Checkstyle and Sonar don’t solve the problem entirely but certainly help. They prevent very ugly things in the code such as very long methods, huge classes, unused variables, and nested loopings. Just remember that you must configure these tools in the right way, or else you will be correcting everything in the code and it will be really annoying.
6 – Implement Code Review Culture
This is crucial to improve the code-quality from your team. Every time someone finishes their tasks the Code Review must be executed. You must make other members of your team learn the best programming practices so they can work on their own.
7 – Implement Knowledge Transfer Culture
Certainly, the culture of sharing knowledge in your team is extremely powerful. You will be improving your speaking skills and will be learning new content that is crucial for your daily work. You can prepare Knowledge Transfer about best programming practices techniques, frameworks, tests, whatever you find your team needs most.
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No Bugs, No Stress – Create a Life-Changing Software Without Destroying Your Life
Keep up improving yourself!
