Coding Guidelines / Code Reviews / Clean Code

10 Good Coding Principles

Code reviews are fundamental to the software development process, even when there's only one engineer.

https://www.chakshunyu.com/blog/this-is-my-10-questions-react-code-reviewing-routine

"I first look for security, functionality, and readability. Is the code simple, or cluttered, bloated, and inefficient? How many lines of unnecessary code will I need to re-write or remove? I check for any weaknesses that could cause vulnerabilities and confirm that regulatory requirements have been met."

Everyone has their own coding style and every developer or team will have requirements that are specific to their codebase. Effective code reviews often have checklists. Below is a limited list of general suggestions you could consider including:

The software passes automated and manual testing
Code follows applicable conventions and is easy to understand
Code is not duplicated
No negatively named boolean variables
Scrutinize methods with boolean parameters
Blocks of code inside loops are as small as possible
No memory leaks

But more important than which exact points a candidate brings up is their reasoning for doing so. Be wary of candidates who get stuck on tabs-versus-spaces bike shedding at the expense of more crucial engineering elements.

Write deterministic code - Given an input, code always produces the same output

Code should be consistent
Code should be self-descriptive
Code should be well documented
Code should utilize stable modern features
Code shouldn't be unnecessarily complex
Code shouldn't be un-performant (don't write intentionally slow code)

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/clean-coding-for-beginners

https://www.toptal.com/software/six-commandments-of-good-code

Treat Your Code the Way You Want Other's Code to Treat You
Good Code Is Easily Read and Understood, in Part and in Whole
Good Code Has a Well Thought-out Layout and Architecture to Make Managing State Obvious
Good Code Doesn't Reinvent the Wheel, It Stands on the Shoulders of Giants
Don't Cross the Streams
When Possible, Let the Computer Do the Work

Error Handling

Bugs
Error Handling
- Corner Cases
- Disk full, etc
Input Validation both client side and server side

NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here)

In programming, it is also common to refer to the "NIH syndrome" as the tendency towards reinventing the wheel(reimplementing something that is already available) based on the belief that in-house developments are inherently better suited, more secure, more controlled, quicker to develop, and incur lower overall cost (including maintenance cost) than using existing implementations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here