Reflect on Coding Standard
13 Feb 2025
The Value and Challenge of Coding Standards: Reflections on ESLint
My first week using ESLint with VSCode was frustrating and enlightening. At first, it felt like an endless game of whack-a-mole—fix one error, and another would pop up. The sheer number of warnings and errors made me question whether my coding habits were as solid as I had believed. But as the week went on, I began to see the real value of adhering to coding standards.
Coding standards are often perceived as restrictive, but they provide a structured way to write cleaner, more maintainable, and more efficient code. ESLint, in particular, enforces best practices and catches subtle bugs before they become real problems. Initially, some rules felt unnecessary—why should I care about consistent spacing or semicolon usage? However, as I fixed each issue, I started to appreciate the consistency and readability it brought to my codebase.
One of the biggest benefits of using a linter like ESLint is the long-term impact on teamwork and collaboration. When working in a team, having a unified style prevents unnecessary debates over trivial formatting issues and allows developers to focus on actual logic and architecture. It also makes onboarding new developers easier, as they can quickly adapt to a well-structured codebase without guessing the preferred conventions.
That said, rigid adherence to coding standards can be counterproductive if applied without flexibility. Some rules may not fit every project, and blindly following them can sometimes hinder readability rather than enhance it. The key is to strike a balance—leveraging the benefits of ESLint while customizing rules to fit the specific needs of a project and team.
In the end, my experience with ESLint was both painful and useful. The initial struggle to fix errors was frustrating, but the improvements in code quality were undeniable. Coding standards, when enforced thoughtfully, are not just arbitrary rules—they are essential tools that promote clarity, consistency, and efficiency. What seemed like a chore at first turned out to be a valuable learning experience, reinforcing the importance of writing code that is not just functional, but also clean and maintainable.
Acknowledgement: Chatgpt and other online sources were utilized to provide information and insight, to improve grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation.