That’s in a Guideline

Post from May 17, 2016 (↻ October 6, 2017), filed under Web Development.

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 the Author

Jens Oliver Meiert is a tech lead and author (sum.cumo, W3C, O’Reilly). He loves trying things, particularly in the realms of philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com he shares and generalizes and exaggerates some of his thoughts and experiences.

If you have any thoughts or questions (or recommendations) about what he writes, leave a comment or a message.

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• What’s in a Guideline? Win a Copy of the Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines!
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