Having a general standard of coding is imperative in the field of professional programming. When coding is first taught, typically,
coding standards are not outright taught, it is usually only through coding examples where one gets a general sense of the proper way
to format your code. Newer programming languages such as python relies on whitespace, indents, newlines and proper formatting in order
for it to work, basically forcing some form of proper coding style. However, older languages such as c, c++, or even java do not have
such a heavy reliance on these things, making it so that one can write multiple lines of code, on a single line. Such languages allow
for random coding styles that may not follow proper guidelines, but still work regardless.
This type of habit may be okay for a hobbiest first learning how to code or a high school student just taking the class to have a class,
but when you get to higher level coding, it quickly becomes apparent how important having a basic coding standard is. It’s not to simply
make it look pretty and organized to make you look good, but it helps both yourself and others that may be working on a program. When
working on a big program, fixing bugs can become unbearably painful with a messy code. Consider your coding to simply be another language,
and your writing an essay in that language. You would not write a thousand word essay in a single paragraph with no puntuation. It would
make it hard to read. Not knowing when a section starts or ends would make reading such an essay a punishment. Why would you do that to
yourself in your code? All a coding standard does is improve the legibility of your code and makes it more readable. Indenting when
necessary allows one to know exactly where each section of your code starts or ends and what codes will be executed within a loop or if
statement.
Eventually, we learn other techniques to improve the readability of your code such as adopting more functional programming, where large
sections of code that serve only one purpose are put into functions to make your main code easier to read and debug. Commenting where
necessary is also taught as it helps not only yourself, but others working on a code to find what section they are looking for, but it all
starts with knowing a basic coding standard.
When you look back on your own code, if there are no applied standards, looking for anything becomes difficult, and this is the code you
wrote yourself. The difficulty of someone trying to read your messy code increases exponentially. Fixing these problems by applying coding
standards makes yours and everyone else’s lives easier.