That’s in a Guideline

Published on May 17, 2016 (updated Aug 24, 2023), filed under development. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)

About two weeks ago I ended a little lottery to give away signed copies of my last book, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines. Overall, the response was low (8 comments, 3 tweets, 2 notes elsewhere). But I promised to feature select feedback and, of course, the winners. Here we go.

• Matthias Schelling: “In CSS, not every property/value pair speaks for itself […]. Always write comments for these ambiguous declarations […]!”

  I wish to comment without rating: I deem this an important idea but also a tricky one, for it involves making assumptions about what fellow developers know. For beginners we could need to comment everything, for some experts truly nothing.

• Gabriel Song: “Guidelines improve consistency among code by multiple authors [which leads to] better readability and collaboration.”

  This hits close to an opening point in The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines: “The major, direct benefit of coding guidelines is improved consistency. Why? Because with comprehensive coding guidelines all code gets formatted the same way.”

• Shay Cojocaru: “Consistency among team members and keeping concerns separated.”

  Separation of Concerns is a key to improving maintainability and I agree that this makes for a vital piece in coding guidelines.

• Sophie Céline: “Most important lesson for me was keeping code well structured and as clean, short and simple as possible.”

  This is a great lesson that serves all of us 😊

• Anton Maslo: “For me the most important part of guidelines is to avoid future pain. It may be quick to bolt on thoughtless hacks here and there (getting the job done!)—until something trivial takes hours to find out ‘Where does it fit in this bloated mess?’”

  Although the interesting question for our work is, how exactly do we avoid future pain, it is the forward direction that I like to see in this thinking. We should develop for the present but still look ahead.

The frameworks book, then, shall go to:

• Jim Lehmer: “Coding guidelines are important because they keep me from walking down the hall and strangling a junior dev!” (with a smiley).

  I wish this not to become common practice but like to acknowledge this comment for most of us will be able to relate, in a compassionate way 😊

Thanks everyone for participating! If you’re among the winners, please email me so that I can arrange for getting you your copy. Until the next “Little Book”!

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies, including Google; I’m an open-source developer and a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG); and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also with respect to politics and philosophy. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my experiences and perspectives. (Please share feedback—interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)