Coding in Software Engineering

Coding Best Practices in Software Engineering: Variables and Constants

There are many programming languages and each has different features and capabilities. However, coding best practices make it so that the good engineering practices are followed in each language.

For example, coding best practices dictate that you have the same naming conventions, formatting conventions, and commenting conventions on all software. The best practices for coding include rules for naming variables, methods, and functions to help software developers understand how to use a specific variable or function.

Some coding best practices include:

1. Assigning names to all variables, functions, and methods to make the code easier to read, understand, and maintain. In using a meaningful name, the code will explain itself to anyone who reads it. This will cut down on maintenance costs and confusion when making changes. It is important to be as specific as possible with these names.
2. Use commonly spoken language for the names. Descriptive text, typically in whatever the native language of the developer, should be used. Do not use abbreviations, even those that are commonly used. For example, do not use PT when you actually mean Professional Title.
3. The shorter and clearer your names or commands are, the better off you will be. Too much additional text can result in confusion and long, complex code.

Worried about the coding in your software engineering? CAST can help you review and understand your code to find errors or security risks – schedule a code review today.

Good Coding Practices: Functions

For most businesses and companies, good coding practices include using the same set of programming languages throughout all development. The benefit of this choice is that the organization can tailor and monitor coding best practices for their specific set of languages. This makes error identification easier and remediation simpler. Even more importantly, good coding practices ensure that you can find security risk in your software once you find it in one – it should have similar code that you can seek out.

Some of the good coding practices for functions include:

1. The names of the functions should be meaningful and descriptive. Just like mentioned before, you want the names to be self-explanatory and not require a guide or working knowledge.
2. The function should begin with an action word for what it does. You can include another word if that helps to make the title more descriptive. Length is not a problem in coding if it is to make the use more apparent.

You can use coding comments to help people understand the rest of the code segment. Commenting conventions should be used to make everything easy to grasp and you don’t want to go overboard with the comments.

Coding Standards Best Practices

There is a set of comprehensive coding standards best practices that include all of code development. It helps to ensure that all developers work in the same manner. The goal is so that all software coding looks like it could be done by the same person.

Even more importantly, the coding standard best practices state how to handle existing codes when your systems undergo maintenance – whether that maintenance comes from the same team or a newer one.

In order to stay within coding standards, you (or your developer) want to use file header comments and trailing comments. You don’t want to include information that is easy to understand within the software as this should only be used with the most important parts of the code.

When formatting your code (or arranging it so that it is easy to read) you want to use indentations, alignment design, and white space. This will make things easy to read and understand. Formatting does take extra time, but it will make maintenance and changes easier down the road.

Have questions about how your coding is formatted or whether it has been completed in the correct way? CAST can help you to better understand and gauge your coding and software engineering – schedule a code review today.

Coding in Software Engineering Advantages

Knowing the coding in your software engineering has many advantages. The biggest one is the increased efficiency (save time) of your developers, QA team, and architects. Your delivery team will no longer have to go over unnecessary details in depth. By learning this language and following coding best practices, your team will see an overall reduction in complexity. This will allow for more development and reduced costs for your individual projects. Maintenance costs will also drop as risks and breaks in the system can be spotted automatically with engineering tools.

CAST Engineering Dashboard

CAST Engineering Dashboard helps delivery organizations that you are living up to your commitment to deliver high-quality products that help your company serve its clients.

Our Engineering Dashboard works to:

• Quickly identify any multi-component software flaws
• Validate against industry standard rules for security and risk
• Identifies specific code location of critical flaws in software
• Finds architectural flaws inside the riskiest objects and transactions
• Builds action plans based on an optimized list of high impact issues
• Gives insight into why specific defects are occurring and guidelines for fast remediation

For more information about CAST Engineering Dashboard or any of our other products, contact us today or schedule a free demo.