1. Save yourself the mental stress in the nearest future.
2. Save the next developer from mental stress.

It is said that most devs spend more time debugging codes than actually writing them. I can tell you that you can slash half of the time spent on debugging your code if you would take time to pay attention to code quality. Most devs tend to shy away from this topic especially junior devs, you hear them say things like “Code quality? that's a senior dev problem, I am okay as long as it works” months later you find them spending hours trying to find out why the code prints out 1 instead of 2.

So what exactly is code quality? There are various human and machine metrics that determine the quality of code, some define code quality as to how “long-term useful” and “long-term maintainable” a codebase is. — alright, enough with all the jargon.

I would simply like to define code quality as the ability for a code or codebase to be readable and understandable by firstly humans and secondly machines.

If we can recall the previous definition made mention of the term “How long-term useful” if we take a good look at this term we can say that in order for a code or codebase to be in use for a long-term it has to be refactorable and also accommodate new features which in turn would be hectic if we encounter difficulty in reading and understanding the code or codebase. Also, the definition mentioned the term “How long-term maintainable” we can’t stress enough on the issue of code maintenance as most devs prefer to start from scratch than maintain someone else's code or codebase. A maintainable code or codebase must score a high measure on how readable, understandable and interrelated every piece of code snippet is with one another and also provides the ease for modification.

let's take a look at the code below:

Nothing serious going on in the code above, but we can notice how the name of each method explains their functionality, how the comments help in explaining each method in detail and how the class is clean and structured i.e the naming of the entities, the spaces, type of indentation… e.t.c. Now let us take a look at its implementation below:

If you were able to read and understand the code above and also make sense of it, that shows how far code readability goes in increasing the level of code quality. In view of these, we can suggest that code quality boils down to code readability i.e the ability for you and other devs to read and make sense of your code or codebase within minimal time. — So you don't have fellow devs using the “WTF” word every minute when they are starring at your code or codebase.

Code readability takes into account the following:

1. Code Structure.
2. Naming Convention.
3. The frequent use of comments where needed.

In summary, we can say that a readable code can be refactored easily, a readable code consumes less amount of time spent on trying to understand it, a readable code makes room to accommodate new features with easy, a readable code explains itself, and all these put together makes a readable code maintainable.

So when next you writing that piece of code ask yourself these:

1. “Am I saving myself from mental stress in the future?”
2. “Am I saving the next developer from mental stress?” — Who knows? you could be a messiah.

Happy Coding!

Check me out on | Linkedin: David Igbigbi. | Twitter: @alindavidsin02