01 Apr How coding becomes a handbrake for your business
There is an unstoppable demand for the release of new software. The result is often rushed coding, with no time to clean up loose ends. These loose ends build up over time, making systems expensive to change.
Other effects on your business is that functionality starts taking too long to develop and falls behind on business needs. As such, the quality of the system degrades over time.
The challenge is to strike a balance between rapid delivery of functionality in the short-term while cleaning up of software code for long-term maintainability.
This is why you should pay close attention to clean coding, especially if you’re not a programmer yourself. High software maintenance costs can cause businesses to fail completely.
Here are some of the benefits of clean coding:
1. Clean code brings clarity
Writing code can be relatively easy, but it will be read many times by different people during its lifetime. Therefore, software developers must take time to write code as clearly as possible. The choice of names for classes and procedures must be clear and it should do what it says. Developers will then spend less time to understand what the code does.
2. Clean code means efficiency
While duplicating code is hard to avoid, it is also tough to reduce when it appears. To make a code change in as few places as possible, increases productivity. Duplication often results in changes being done in one part, but not another, which leads to inconsistent behaviour in the system.
The best way to avoid unclean coding is to future-proof the coding from the onset. Here are a few factors to consider:
1. Refactoring
Careful code refactoring improves the code without changing behaviour or adding new features. Refactoring should be done continuously while adding new functionality. When refactoring is not done continuously and becomes a task or project, it often is costly and difficult to contain.
2. Code-aging
Removing code that is not used any more might seem counter productive but in reality maintaining dead code causes confusion. Developers need to have courage to remove unused code
Future-proofing has its limits as it is impossible to plan in advance. You cannot predict what is going to happen to your system in future – therefore it is a good idea to prepare your code by making sure it’s clean.
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