“You know how to code but how do you make yourself a better coder?” – you asked yourself.

Coding is already hard as it is and now we’re talking about making it another level up. Everything has to be organised from the start or you will face problems later on. In a software development process, coding can be the most difficult part. Thus, you better get that coding useful in the future as in maintainable, testable and reusable.

Let’s get to these practices that will help you in becoming a better coder so you can write better code and ensure it helps in making the work of your team is efficient.

Use A Standard Coding

Did you know that it is hard to maintain such unorganised and badly written code? If you want to write a good code, you should follow the standard for naming formatting, conventions, etc. They are nice because they ease those who read the code afterwards, even you. It is advisable to follow wider-acceptance coding instead of your own.

Use Meaningful Names

Have you ever use names like $m, $k, and $test for your variable? Feeling guilty? Have you ever thought how you supposed to read it in the future? You should name your code after something meaningful in terms of variable names, function/method names and also class names. Name them like $tempfile, $dbResult or $request (this depends on your coding style guidelines that may use underscores, camelCase, or PascalCase). 

Use A Testing Framework

Did you know testing is a crucial process in making the code application work? Here to some good testing tools for you to your PHP Classes: PHPUnit and SimpleTest.

Write useful comments

This is crucial. It may look useless now, but just wait until you left your thousand-line script for a couple of days. With the useful comments, it can make your life or anyone reading it afterwards easier.  On a side note, keep your comments up-to-date for a better-maintained code.

Well, there are a lot more ways to get yourself to be a better coder and you just have to read more. You can find it here. May this article be useful to you programmers out there. Share if you find it useful!