Writing clean code is a matter of skill as much as it is a personal habit. For 25 years, since the Java programming language was launched it has evolved, and the Java coding practices have advanced too. To achieve your desired goal of the software, application or product you intend to produce, you need to have a set of coding principles that will guide you when creating code.
These coding principles will form the essence of writing clean Java code, making it easy to maintain, troubleshoot and onboard. Ideally your coding principles should be comprehensive and include practices such as naming methods carefully, keeping small methods, using comments, maintaining a consistent style, using built-in logging, writing test-first code, and identifying “code smells” for refactoring.
By maintaining clean coding principles, you can create codebases that are simple, focused, and testable, thereby enhancing refactoring efforts later and lowering the total cost of ownership of the software development lifecycle. Moreover, with the focus on IT cost optimization and with the scarcity of developer resources, you would want developers to focus more on innovation than maintenance of legacy systems. To achieve these objectives, here’s how clean coding principles helps:
Easily change and maintain codebase: During the productive life of a software or application, the need for regular maintenance and making changes is inevitable. With a clean codebase not only is it easier to maintain, it also helps to make changes more effectively.
Achieve faster turnaround time when troubleshooting: There are many instances in the life of a software program, application or product may experience snags. Troubleshooting in such instances is challenging as the software needs to be functional at all times. By writing clean code you can fix technical defects faster while ensuring the continuous availability.
Ensure higher productivity through quicker onboarding: Building a software is a collaborative effort and many developers may be involved in creating, updating and maintaining it. As new developers join at different stages in the development lifecycle, clean code is easier to understand, making onboarding faster and improving productivity.
What clean coding principles are followed, the code that is generated tends to exhibit certain characteristics that make them unique. What it does is It makes your Java code simple, focused and testable.
Keep it simple: An important characteristic of clean Java code lies in its simplicity. By keeping code simple you can achieve the desired outcomes of better software design and implementation. With complex codebases, not only is it prone to errors, it is difficult to maintain and read.
Keep it focused: Code sets need to be written with the focus on solving a specific problem. Across all abstraction levels of classes, methods, modules, and packages, the piece of code must relate to only solving the particular problem.
Make it testable: When clean code is simple and focused, it makes it easy to test. The process of testing codebases must be intuitive and preferably automated. In this way, the baseline behavior of the codebase can be established and changes can be easily made.
The practice of writing clean Java code helps you to achieve the goals of the software you create. Writing clean code that is simple, code that focuses on solving a specific problem, code that is easy to read, maintain, test and change, not only helps in better refactoring it also helps to reduce the total cost of ownership of the software development lifecycle.
By inculcating coding principles from the start, you can make better use of new technology that you may invariably have to adopt. What is more important today is effective utilization of scare resources such as the developer workforce. This where a low-code plays a critical role by empowering developers, IT and business teams with full-stack technology, to translate ideas and concepts into software applications rapidly, with minimal technical and maximum value. Get to know how.