Do You Write Good Code At Work?

There is a world of difference between writing code at home and in a job. At home, you can spend as long as you like, polishing the code, and writing tight, clever code, even if you are the only one who understands it. At work the emphasis is on writing clear and understandable code that is easy to maintain. Developers often change jobs and the next person after you, or even a current team member needs to be able to read and understand your code.

One way to manage this is to enforce company standards by insisting on thorough peer reviews and inspections. This ensures that all code is up to standard before it is allowed to become part of the build. Software Engineers have to do this more formally but non engineers should always strive for best practices. A peer review is where other team members look at the code you've changed and check that it is up to scratch. A software inspection is a more formal review process.

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