As tech companies increasingly hire from coding boot-campers and online learners, team leads are seeking effective methods to streamline code production and review in teams where skills are heterogeneous. To minimize the stressors of collaboration and increase the efficiency of work, teams focus on clean coding, appropriate pairing of veteran and non-veteran skills, and effective use of AI-assisted coding.
Coding for Humans
Programmers tend to write code that is intelligible to them and the computer, but its important that programmers keep in mind that others will interact with the processes they create. Reliable code cannot be produced and maintained if it is not manipulable by the rest of the team. The first step to producing clean code is to name variables, functions, and data appropriately. There is nothing more worrying, and time-consuming, than dealing with a program written by someone else with ill-defined signifies.
Another component of clean coding is writing comments with intent. Instead of trying to explain every little detail in comments, the programmer should use comments to communicate the strengths, weaknesses, or progress of specific blocks of code to others. This use of comments helps teams to focus on what works and what doesn’t. It also allows the team to focus on successive incremental development on specific goals rather than specific coding inclinations that may vary from person to person and across skill level.
Bridging the Gap
Successive incremental development theory is prevalent and has led to the success of many companies, governments, and groups’ activities. This process which entails the melding development and project management is a way to bridge the gap and produce code with higher reliability. Test driven development is a practical implementation of successive incremental development theory for tech uses. This method of producing code asks the programmer to think of ways to test software that they have not yet created. When the software fails the test, the developer gains information on how to proceed in improving their code.
The benefits of this method of producing code and managing projects allows for efficient use of team skills and resources. Test can be written by more skilled programmers, and subsequently very precise coding needs can be directed to less skilled coders to handle. In effect the division of coding responsibilities allows for successive improvement of the entire code body of the project by testing smaller increments based on desired functionality.
Effective use of coding environments
Both programmers trained in traditional environments and in nontraditional environments have idiosyncrasies to their coding. The most effective way to help manage those idiosyncrasies is to educate team members on the appropriate uses of various IDEs. Many beginners and veterans rely on IDEs to make their coding more uniform and swifter, but in some cases, they are not using the best IDE for the tasks they have been assigned to complete. Especially for those who were trained in a coding bootcamp, it is important to help them to better understand the role of IDEs, but also the best IDE for the tasks they are trying to complete.
Delivering the Best Product
Ensuring that your team produces the best code is an endless struggle. The implementation of common standards and effective working relationships is the biggest way to improve the reliability and maintainability of the team’s product. While effective use of artificial intelligence and human intelligence in the form of clean coding practices and efficient use of IDEs will help to strengthen the team’s output, the most effective method to refine products is successive incremental development. This is because TDD is both a developmental methodology and a management framework. It serves double duty to maximize team intellectual resources and working compatibility. Delivering the best product is a function of creating and maintaining the best team dynamics.
