Coding Practices learned from Software Industry(4th year)

I have survived 4 years in the software industry. Software Industry has taught me, becoming a good problem solver or challenging guy is not enough.

Only coders with focus, professionalism, and good practices can survive this industry. I am sharing some tips and practices, I use for Progress Tracking, Collaboration, Revertability, Documentation on any Project.

1. Back to basic, maintaining your git branches is a must.

2. Always have to update all of your work updates in a Project Board/ Agile Sprint Carts.

3. Take screenshots of before and previous states. And use annotation if possible. This practice makes your work recognizable to your management.

4. Always create a separate git branch for individual issues. Notify your peer partners about the new branch and keep updated about the branch changes. So that any conflict may not happen.

5. Your sprint carts should be informative. Always add branch name, commit message/or commit id if duplicate commit messages occur.

Bugs: If you are solving a bug you can keep a short comment where the problem was.

Updates: If you add a new feature, leave a high-level description(For management/user level understanding) and a technical definition(For Peer Partners) of the problem you want to solve.

NB: If you want a smooth team interaction, then define the problem with slug and mention the file and line where the bug was.

7. If you are new to a team, then do not merge unnecessary or duplicate codes; without understanding the project leader’s vision, the project’s targeted users, and the project’s goals. You never know if a module is kept for future development. Ask your project leader as much as you can. Make your concept clear before development. Check if any documentation is left by your peer-partners or previous developers.

8. Do not merge any code without spending enough time with the codebase. It can be a month, you have to understand all the mechanisms well, before a module merging.

9. Do not merge any child branch with the master branch, without solving an issue fully and intensive QA. At least a few days of observation and trial run with users are necessary, before merging and deleting a child branch. If you do not maintain this well, you can be stuck forever.

10. Maintain clean code practices, have indentations and meaningful definitions of variables and objects. And maintain separate modules and files for separate functions. One module or function must serve one purpose. Don’t make your object or entity name confusing. It saves a lot of time for others.

11. Do not use too much comment. Because updating a code without updating their respective comments, can bring chaos when your peer partner will work on the same branch. Practice writing your code, so clear and sound that, any coder can read your code easily without comments. Readability is a must.

12. Remember, if your code is understandable without having comments by any newcomers, then your code is professional.

13. Don’t be greedy or cheap. The more you collaborate with other peer partners, coders, and managers; And the more comfortable you are to communicating with others, the more you will be appreciated. It is good for your professionalism. People who go very far is an honest team player.

14. Revertability is very important. If your leader tells you or if you understand, you have made a mistake. So you have to undo all the things. So, working on a separate branch can save your life. All the previous tips are written for revertability. Follow them well.

15. Time management is a must. So, if you have multiple issues to solve at the same time, set priority and sort on those tasks based on priority. You can use priority flags in most of the project management software.

16. Always try to code with more focus and concentration; not very fast, but steadily and consciously. It saves a lot of time because you will make fewer silly mistakes.

17. Code refactoring is a must because it saves a lot of resources and development time for a company in future updates. So, as an honest employee, it is your religious duty to do code refactoring, more often you can.

18. Documentation: I see documentation as the highest nature of a professional coder. I love to document my work. I document everything — how have I solved an issue, where the problem was, where I found the solution. And I try to map all the low-level modules, objects, and user differentiable features separately. It helps me focus on the project goal. Even nobody allows it, I still map the whole project. It helps me to navigate throughout the project. And it can save the time of my peer partners and team members when they are stuck in a situation. So documentation is itself an art. It helps you to code organized and well-planned. So you get rarely confused when developing a project. Nothing should be remembered in the head, because, most of the coders handle multiple projects. So documenting facts, goals, technical details are a must.

This much I can remember at the moment about my experience with coding practices in the software industry. I will keep the post updated with dates and added tips, so subscribe or follow the URL.

Special thanks and mention to my pear partners Naim and Abdullah Vai …