4 Best Practices to Ensure Code Quality

Code quality is one of the most important aspects of software development. It affects not only the performance and reliability of the software, but also the productivity and satisfaction of the developers. In this blog post, I will share some tips on how to improve code quality using four practices:

1. Conducting thorough code reviews to catch bugs, improve readability, and enforce coding standards. Many languages and frameworks today offer tools for enforcing such standards. They don’t need to be elaborate if you are just starting out. .eslintrc, pyproject.toml, cargo.toml are some examples that can hold these standardizing rules. Using CI/CD pipelines and deployment rules can also really help here.

But what benefit do we get with these reviews and rules? Code reviews are a process of examining and commenting on the code written by other developers. They help to find and fix errors, improve the clarity and consistency of the code, and ensure that the code follows the agreed-upon rules and conventions. Code reviews also foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among developers, as they can learn from each other’s feedback and suggestions.

2. Writing comprehensive automated tests to verify the functionality and maintainability of the code. Automated tests are a way of checking that the code works as expected and does not break when changes are made.

They can cover different levels of testing, such as unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests. Automated tests help to detect bugs early, reduce manual testing efforts, and increase confidence in the quality of the code.

They also make the code more readable and understandable, as they document the intended behavior and requirements of the code.

Again, each language and framework has a lot of options to choose from. In the web development, Playwright, Cypress, Jest, and many more offer very powerful tooling for writing automated tests. For Python and its ecosystem, we have built-in library like unittest, 3rd party libraries like Pytest, behave and more.

3. Using static code analysis tools to identify potential issues and enforce coding best practices. Static code analysis tools are programs that analyze the code without executing it.

They can detect common errors, such as syntax errors, logical errors, memory leaks, security vulnerabilities, and code smells.

They can also check if the code follows certain standards and guidelines, such as naming conventions, formatting rules, and coding principles.

Static code analysis tools help to improve the quality and consistency of the code, as well as to prevent bugs and defects from reaching production.

Some popular examples include Snyk, Sonarlint, WhiteSource Bolt, GitHub CodeQL. Also, almost every language and frameworks also offer some tooling for static analysis. For example, mypy, a popular Python library provides strong type checking and enforcing rules to ensure robust and type safety. Each of them offers powerful analysis and are very configurable. Teams and even individual developers can tune it to their liking and their risk acceptance.

4. Implementing version control system and branching strategies to track changes and collaborate effectively. Version control system is a tool that records the history of changes made to the code over time. It allows developers to revert to previous versions, compare differences, and merge changes from different sources. Currently, the most popular ones are GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. But there are other options available like JetBrains Teamcity, JetBrains Space

Each of these tools also offers various branching strategies. Branching strategies are a way of organizing and managing the code in different branches, or parallel lines of development. They help to isolate features, bug fixes, experiments, and releases from each other, and to avoid conflicts and confusion when merging them.

These version control systems and branching strategies help to improve the traceability and accountability of the code, as well as to facilitate teamwork and collaboration among developers.

Improving and maintaining code quality is an ongoing challenge that requires various strategies at different stages of the project. I would love to hear your thoughts and tips on this topic. Please share them in the comments section. If you enjoyed this post, please follow me for more content like this. I appreciate your time and attention!