In the modern software development industry, we can categorize software engineers into two groups. The first group consists of developers who are skilled in using various programming languages and tools to complete tasks quickly. These developers are highly valued by managers for their ability to meet tight deadlines.
The second type of software engineer focuses on building software that lasts. They don’t just rush to finish tasks—they follow best software development practices to keep the code clean, scalable, and easy to maintain.
These developers understand that quality matters. They write well-structured code, make sure proper testing is done, and use version control tools like Git to track changes. They also refactor code when needed, follow naming conventions, and use AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot to work faster and smarter.
By setting up solid software architecture and automating testing and deployment with CI/CD, they help companies avoid technical debt—a common problem when shortcuts are taken. Unfortunately, many product and service-based companies don’t realize the value of these developers until bad code starts slowing down the business.
This second group may not always be the fastest, but they make sure the software is built to last.
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Now Let’s Dive into the Best Software Development Practices
1. Follow Coding Standards
Writing clean code doesn’t always necessarily involve applying complex design patterns to solve an object-oriented problem instead starting with small steps like adhering to standard naming conventions, using indentation, and adding proper tab spaces and formatting can produce a more readable and maintainable code.
But why is code quality important?
When deadlines get close, code quality often suffers because managers focus on fast results and keeping users happy. In user-centered software development, if an app meets the acceptance criteria, it might seem good enough. However messy code can cause big problems later when updates or fixes are needed. Future software engineers, especially junior developers, may struggle to understand and work with poorly structured code, leading to delays and mistakes. To prevent this, management should make sure that software development best practices are always followed, keeping the code clean and well-organized.
Here are a few good coding practices every software development team can adapt to improve code quality gradually:
- Try to refactor existing code as you are fixing the bugs.
- Use code comments, they are an excellent way to simultaneously document the code.
- Use the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle, to avoid code duplication.
- Pair Programming can also be effective in enhancing code quality since you can immediately receive feedback from your peer who is assisting as you code.
2. Version Controlling
Imagine an enterprise-grade application used by thousands of users suddenly crashes in production. Such failures can seriously damage a company’s reputation. Identifying what went wrong and who is responsible becomes crucial. However, if developers were directly modifying code on hosting platforms without proper tracking, it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the issue.
This is where Version Control Systems (VCS) like Git play a vital role. They provide structured tracking, collaboration tools, and rollback options that help software teams maintain code quality and quickly resolve issues.
Here are a few advantages of using Version Control which can ease the life of the developers:
- History Tracking: Version control systems maintain a detailed history of all changes made to the codebase. Every commit represents a specific set of modifications, allowing developers to trace back and identify when and why a particular change was made.
- Branching and Merging: Version control enables developers to create branches, which are independent lines of development. This feature allows for isolated changes and new features to be developed without directly affecting the main codebase. Branches can later be merged back into the main branch, facilitating controlled integration and reducing the chances of conflicts.
- Conflict Resolution: When multiple developers are working on the same codebase simultaneously, conflicts can occur when trying to merge changes. Version control systems provide tools and mechanisms to handle and resolve conflicts efficiently, ensuring that conflicting changes are appropriately managed.
- Rollback and Recovery: In case of failures or bugs discovered in the production environment, version control allows for easy rollbacks to previous stable versions of the code. This ability to revert to known working states helps restore functionality quickly and minimizes the impact on the company’s reputation.
- Collaboration and Code Reviews: Version control systems support collaborative workflows, where multiple developers can work on different branches or features simultaneously. Pull requests or merge requests enable code reviews, allowing team members to provide feedback, catch errors, and ensure code quality before merging changes into the main codebase.
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3. Writing Tests
Pull request reviews are the final checkpoint for code quality before deployment. However, if developers add untested code to an application, the chances of breaking existing features increase. This is where software testing plays a crucial role.
Despite its importance, writing tests is often underrated. Many developers see it as an extra workload because it doesn’t provide immediate business value. In fast-paced environments, teams may skip testing to meet tight deadlines. However, as the software scales and new features are added, the lack of proper testing leads to delays, unexpected failures, and chaos.
To avoid such issues, development teams can adopt the following testing techniques to improve code reliability and productivity:
End-to-End (E2E) Testing: This type of testing involves running the entire flow of the application and verifying whether the business logic is correctly implemented, these types of tests simulate the behavior of the end-user and therefore can test both the client-side and backend of the application deployed and working together.
Unit Testing: They focus on verifying the functionality of individual units or components of the code, such as functions or classes, these types of tests also ensure that each unit behaves as expected and can be executed quickly and in isolation.
Test Driven Development (TDD): This is another approach that primarily focuses on tests, rather than the actual code, the idea here is to write tests first and then add code that passes these tests, techniques such as Red, Green, and Refactor can be used in this scenario.
4. Regular Code Reviews
Okay so your Unit, Integration, and E2E tests have passed, congratulations! But wait ? Does that mean your code can successfully be merged to the main branch or shipped to production? Not necessarily, tests are an excellent source to verify that your code doesn’t break existing features and the test cases written by the Quality Assurance team are all green but they won’t tell if you wrote an unnecessary method to sort an array of objects that were implemented in a helper class and could have been reused, this code smells, unfortunately, need to be reviewed manually to ensure the code is maintainable and extensible for other developers, but your lead will probably not be excited to review 60+ files you have just added, let’s be honest and here are few tips to improve this reviewing process:
- Code reviews should be done regularly.
- Add a clear and concise title and description on your pull requests, this can help the reviewer in understanding the context.
- The code change set should be small and logical, so it can quickly get reviewed, pull requests should be raised after every bug fix and addition of a new feature.
- Use separate branches for fixing a bug or implementing every new feature, this keeps the changes isolated and facilitates easier collaboration and testing.
5. Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD):
To make your development team more productive, the first step is to automate repetitive tasks. Imagine you have written tests that run with a single command, but you still have to manually enter that command every time you need a report. That’s where CI/CD pipelines (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) come in.
By automating the build, testing, and deployment processes, CI/CD helps catch issues early, ensures consistent builds, and enables faster, more reliable software releases.
Here are some of the key benefits you can harness with CI/CD:
- Automated Test Reports: One of the major advantages of automated tests is the generation of detailed test reports. These reports provide valuable insights into the test results, including information about test coverage, pass/fail status, and any errors or failures encountered, this can foster continuous feedback and opportunities to optimize existing features.
- Faster time to market: As soon as your code gets reviewed and merged with the branch, it will automatically trigger the CI/CD pipeline. The automated build, test, and deployment processes ensure the code is thoroughly tested and quickly deployed to the desired environment.
- Improved Collaboration: Pull requests, code reviews, and automated testing provide opportunities for collaboration and feedback. This collaboration enhances communication, knowledge sharing, and the overall quality of the software development process.
- Reduced Risks: It’s evident that automation and standardization provided by CI/CD will reduce the risk of human error and inconsistency in the software development processes and automated tests and will ensure that each code change is thoroughly validated, minimizing the likelihood of deploying faulty code to production.
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 Syed Ali RizviSenior Software Engineer at Akvateq |