In the famous words of Mike Tomlin, head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, “The standard is the standard”. How exactly does this pertain to ESLint, JavaScript, or following coding standards? I am not sure. However, the statement by Coach Tomlin serves his players and staff as a reminder that there are standards which are applied to those who are professionals. As professionals, there is a higher expectation of skill and quality of what is produced.
As for Software Engineering professionals, I believe that they are expected to produce code in a highly readible and efficient way. This would allow others who may not know the goal of the program to easily understand what is going on. If I were to see a program be able to complete a complicated task, I would be impressed. If I were to see a program be able to complete a complicated task AND be formatted in a way that was easy to understand, I would be impressed and extremely grateful.
As a student trying to improve my ability as a software engineer, I appreciate the coding standards. It allows me to format my program in a specific and consistent way. By applying the coding standards to my program, my portfolio will showcase my attention to detail and improve the overall quality of the programs I produce.
After my first week of using ESLint and IntelliJ, I appreciated using code quality tools while writing code. It was easy to make mistakes while typing and ESLint provided warnings to make sure I corrected those mistakes before I tested my program. ESLint also provided a reason why it was considering what I wrote as incorrect, and provided references to understand what was going on. ESLint also recommended changes to make my program more efficient and I could apply those changes with just a click of a button. To be able to understand why ESLint checks for these things improves my understanding of JavaScript. Overall, I feel that by continuing to use these standards I will improve my code quality, understanding of the programming language, and help others that may need to reference my code for some guidance.