Coding Guidelines, the Gist

Published on January 13, 2016 (↻ October 3, 2023), filed under Web Development (RSS feed for all categories).

Coding guidelines govern how we write code.

Coding guidelines directly help consistency, and through that, indirectly, impact [code] usability, collaboration, and maintainability.

Coding guidelines are important.

The main ingredients of a coding guideline are: what (not) to do within a particular scope, examples, and an explanation.

Coding guidelines can deal with preference or with quality.

Coding guidelines can be descriptive, prescriptive, or both.

Coding guidelines must be communicated, enforced and reviewed.

And, there are some solid coding guidelines out there.

More: The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines (still brand-new, and still free)!

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, 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 in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you’d like to do me a favor, interpret charitably (I speak three languages, and they do collide), yet be critical and give feedback for me to fix issues, learn, and improve. Thank you!