What's being carried on from ICS314
13 Dec 2023A Reflection On Coding Standards
As the class comes to a close, there are concepts that will stick with me well beyond this course. One of them being coding standards. Coding standards act like a set of rules that ensure that produced code is universally formatted and organized. This was the most important concept during the final weeks of this course. Linters such as EsLint were a massive help in enforcing a few standards. While working on our group project, it became apparent that to some, upholding these standards were not the top priority and, as a result, it became a massive headache to look over and manage their code. Having universal standards (particularly in projects involving larger groups) is an absolute must from here on out. Once I have experienced the neatness and consistency that comes with upholding these standards, I can not go back. Though this is a web development-oriented course, this stretches to any branch of programming. I could apply this to my personal game development projects, or when I go out into the workforce where there will most likely be some form of coding standards present.
A Reflection On Design Patterns
Another concept that will carry far beyond this course is design patterns. Design patterns are the development of simple and reusable components that can be pieced together to complete a larger whole. Attempting to complete larger problems this way allows problems to be broken down into smaller issues that can apply to other coding problems that arise later in development. When developing our web page, we tried to create components that could be used on multiple pages and meteor functions that could be used anywhere without redefinition. In doing so, the scope of the project was decreased and there was less time spent in reimplementing functionality. This is something that I have been and will continue to use outside this course. When developing games, I try to produce classes or structures that contain basic information that many other objects can use to define variables or provide computational information for them. But this can also carry over into the workforce. Companies treasure time and efficiency. If we can produce solutions in a manner that is quick, simple, and reusable to other applications, then we would be a highly valuable employee. This course has taught me a lot about the structure and organization process of software development. Design patterns and coding standards are just a few of the concepts that I will take and carry with me throughout my career as a software engineer.