Book Image

Clean Code in JavaScript

By : James Padolsey
Book Image

Clean Code in JavaScript

By: James Padolsey

Overview of this book

Building robust apps starts with creating clean code. In this book, you’ll explore techniques for doing this by learning everything from the basics of JavaScript through to the practices of clean code. You’ll write functional, intuitive, and maintainable code while also understanding how your code affects the end user and the wider community. The book starts with popular clean-coding principles such as SOLID, and the Law of Demeter (LoD), along with highlighting the enemies of writing clean code such as cargo culting and over-management. You’ll then delve into JavaScript, understanding the more complex aspects of the language. Next, you’ll create meaningful abstractions using design patterns, such as the Class Pattern and the Revealing Module Pattern. You’ll explore real-world challenges such as DOM reconciliation, state management, dependency management, and security, both within browser and server environments. Later, you’ll cover tooling and testing methodologies and the importance of documenting code. Finally, the book will focus on advocacy and good communication for improving code cleanliness within teams or workplaces, along with covering a case study for clean coding. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with JavaScript and have learned how to create clean abstractions, test them, and communicate about them via documentation.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Section 1: What is Clean Code Anyway?
7
Section 2: JavaScript and Its Bits
13
Section 3: Crafting Abstractions
16
Section 4: Testing and Tooling
20
Section 5: Collaboration and Making Changes

Summary

In this chapter, we have explored the tricky topic of other people's code. We've considered how we can deal with legacy code that we inherit; how we can build our understanding of it, how we can debug and make changes without difficult, and how we can confirm our changes with a good testing approach. We've also covered the difficulty of dealing with third-party code, including how to select it and how to interface with it in a risk-averse way via the Adapter pattern. There are plenty of other things that we could have spoken about in this chapter, but hopefully the topics and principles we have been able to explore have given you a sufficient understanding of how to navigate other people's code with an eye toward a clean code base.

In the next chapter, we will cover the topic of communication. It may not appear relevant but communication, both within...