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Common Coding Mistakes You Should Avoid
These are the mistakes that many developers make
Making mistakes is human. However, a lot of the mistakes that developers make can be avoided. If you’re able to avoid the common mistakes in this article, you will be able to write better and cleaner code.
This will not only be beneficial to you but also to the other developers that have to take a look at your code. So you’re not just doing this for yourself—you’re also doing your team a huge favor.
Here are some of those common mistakes that you should avoid.
1. Too Many Things Going On in One Function
According to the single responsibility pattern, a function should only be responsible for doing one thing. And one thing only. I’ve seen way too many functions that fetch, process, and present data all in one function. It’s considered better programming to split this up. One function that fetches the data, one that processes it, and another one that presents the data.
The reason it is important to keep a function focused on a single concern is that it makes it more robust. Let’s say that in the foregoing example the data got fetched from an API. If there is a change to the API—for example, there is a new version—there is a greater danger that the processing code will break if it is part of the same function. This will most likely cause the presentation of the data to break as well.
2. Commented-Out Code
We’ve all seen entire blocks of code containing multiple functions being commented out. No one knows why it’s still there. And no one knows if that block of commented-out code is still relevant. Yet, no one deletes that block of code, which is what you should really do with it. The reason no one deletes this block of code is that everyone assumes that someone else might need it.
Just delete that piece of commented-out code. Even though the code is not in the latest revision, if someone has plans with it the code is still available in version control. But that’s just my two cents.
