The Power of Clean Code with ESLint

24 Sep 2024

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First Impressions

During this first week of coding with ESLint, I initially found that it was a bit tedious because it kind of felt like I had someone in my ear telling me I was doing something wrong constantly. Having an error thrown at me immediately after finishing a new line of code just because I missed a space or I didn’t create a new line under the last line of my code frustrated me a bit because they were errors that I never really had to deal with before.

ESLint as a Tool for Growth

However, after reflecting on why ESLint exists and why coding standards are so important, I think I can say that I’m grateful to have it. I definitely believe that my code looks much more polished compared to code that I’ve created without following coding standards- everything just seems more balanced and clean. I’ve been able to focus more on things like naming conventions, which I realized I barely think about while coding nor have I ever had someone tell me that I need to stick to those rules in place. I think this is extremely important, especially for newer programmers, because it trains them to pay attention to what some may call ‘little things’ and internalize these good practices.

I also think that using ESLint and sticking to coding standards would be helpful for collaboration. If a group of people working on a project decide to follow different ‘styles’ rather than sticking to a single coding standard, I can imagine that the project would end up looking much more cohesive and easier to debug. Jumping into a project that has already been worked on would also be easier to catch up on if coding standards are used so no one has any confusion about certain conventions that might be unusual.

I hope that with the help of ESLint, I will be able to internalize these standards that I’ve never really paid attention to before and continue to apply them to my programming in the future, and even in the professional world. I think that picking up coding standards as a practice can make any one a better programmer and learner.