Coding standards

In the previous chapters, you learned a lot about writing high-quality code. Yet, it is not enough if you do it by yourself only. When you work in a team, you will most likely have the problem that other developers have a different understanding of quality and are on a different skill level than you are.

This is harmful to your code because it might lead to lazy compromises, where the involved parties agree on a way, just to have their peace. Therefore, if you want to work effectively in a team, you want to standardize your work as much as possible.

It makes sense to start with the low-hanging fruit: code formatting. This goes down to the very basics, such as agreeing on how many spaces should be used to indent lines, or where braces should be placed. But why is this even important?

We already shortly addressed this topic in Chapter 5, Optimizing Your Time and Separating Responsibilities. However, we want to expand on it at this point. The main advantage...