How to Improve Code Quality in the Most Practical Way

The software development lifecycle is fraught with cost-reducing constraints, from the time and money required to find, hire, and train new employees; to the cost of replacing broken legacy systems. But there’s no excuse for failing to write high-quality code. It’s possible to cut costs while maintaining a standard of code quality that’s still respectable, and even better once your staff focuses on it with regularity.

The first step is understanding where you’re spending most of your resources while producing software: developers. Read on for six practices to improve code quality without spending a dime.

Code Reviews Are Worth Their Weight In Gold

It costs about $75,000 to train a software engineer for a year. $75,000 is an expensive training and development effort. And it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of writing any given software system. The costs of actually creating the software are rarefied and thin. It’s easy to be shortsighted and think that software costs don’t matter. But they do. The cost of writing and maintaining a system is reflected in the quality of code. Because better code is less expensive to maintain than poor code.

Plus, being able to take the time to write high-quality code is a tremendous advantage. The more a company relies on its talent, the more they need to rely on its expertise. And that expertise is best when it isn’t compromised by sloppy work.

Use Version Control

It’s easy to write correct code. It’s harder to write code that is correct and also easy to maintain. And that’s where version control comes in. With version control, you annotate every line of code with a tag that marks it for later review. In the context of code review, this tag is a “review code.” When reviewing code, you make comments like “add a test” or “adjust this line to fit the pattern.” These are the re-factoring tasks that help to improve the maintainability of your codebase while you write it. Without version control, these annotations are lost when you re-write the code. And so are the points you wish to highlight.

If you have an important new feature or a big refactoring, the very best thing you can do is commit the code first, with version control. That way, everyone else can go back, review the code, and annotate it to re-factor it or add tests.

Invest in Finding Bias Reduction

Another way to save money while improving code quality is to spend time finding biases in your existing code. Programmers are human, and it’s natural for them to imbue the code they write with their own biases.

Customers may present a problem that seemed easy at first. But then the engineer who solved it was in the office with a “hint” for an answer. It may be that the problem is harder than the engineer thinks, or that the solution is more involved than it looked at at first glance. The engineer’s bias towards the “easy” solution may cause the code to reflect that bias. To find bias in existing code, take a moment to read through all the lines of code, looking for patterns that may cause a bias. You may find that a single word or symbol that is reused in a pattern is causing bias.

You can also use code analysis tools to detect patterns and find biases in your code. Code analysis tools identify patterns like “all code in this method is in one place” or “this code has a specific structure.” Once you identify a bias in your code, you can search for ways to reduce the bias.

Write Small, Frequent Code Re-factoring

Code re-factoring is the practice of breaking up long methods into smaller, cleaner methods. In a world where developers are concerned with saving time, there’s little question that re-factoring boosts productivity. Refactoring saves time by making it easier for developers to find the right code for the job without spending too much time researching where to find it. It also reduces the bias that results from re-using symbols and patterns throughout a large chunk of code.

Refactoring makes it easier to find the best version of each piece of code within the re-factored method.

Finally, re-factoring makes it easier to add new features to an existing system. By breaking up a long method, you’ve created smaller chunks of code that can serve as building blocks for new features.

Find and Fix Broken Tests

Testing is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve code quality. Test-driven development (TDD) is perhaps the best-known method for writing automated tests.

Writing automated tests for your code is difficult when you start by writing the code itself. It’s much easier to write tests after the code is written than before. Once you’ve written the code, TDD is a good practice. It’s a good practice to write tests first, and then write the code to satisfy those tests. But it’s also important to remember that TDD is a practice, not a rule. That is, it’s good practice to write tests before writing your code.

When you have time to relax after the crunch of writing code, you can switch gears and think about testing. You can write tests before you write your code, and that’s just as important.

Conclusion

It’s possible to cut costs while maintaining a standard of code quality that’s still respectable, and even better once your staff focuses on it with regularity. Code reviews are worth their weight in gold. Use version control. Find and fix broken tests. Code re-factoring is best achieved through small, frequent refactoring. Finally, write small, frequent code re-factors. Together, these practices will improve code quality and save you time while you’re writing code.