Best practices in JavaScript development

In this blog post, I will focus on some best practices in JavaScript development.

Best practices in JavaScript development refer to the set of guidelines that help developers write efficient, maintainable, and scalable JavaScript code. These practices are important because they ensure that the code is easy to read and understand, reduce the likelihood of introducing bugs and errors, and make it easier for other developers to work on the codebase.

Let's take a look at some of the best practices in JavaScript development and provide some sample code snippets to demonstrate how to implement them.

1. Use Strict Mode

Strict mode is a feature introduced in ECMAScript 5 that allows developers to opt-in to a stricter mode of JavaScript. It helps to prevent common coding mistakes and enables better error handling. To enable strict mode in your JavaScript code, add the "use strict" directive at the top of your script:

" use strict ";

2. Avoid Global Variables

Global variables are variables that are accessible from any part of the code, and they can cause issues with scope and maintainability. To avoid using global variables, wrap your code in a function or module and use closures to limit the scope of your variables:

(function() {
  var myVar = "Hello World";
  console.log(myVar);
})();

3. Use Meaningful Variable Names

Using meaningful variable names can make your code easier to read and understand. Choose variable names that accurately describe the data they represent. Avoid using abbreviations or single-letter variable names:

// this is a Bad variable name
var x =  10;

// Good variable name
var itemCount = 10;

4. Use Comments to Explain Your Code

Comments are an essential part of code documentation, and they help to explain how your code works. Use comments to explain complex code or to provide context for future developers who may need to work on your code:

// this is a fun that calc the total of two numbers

function addNumbers(num1, num2) {
  return num1 + num2;
}

5. Use Modular Code

Modular code is code that is organized into smaller, independent units that can be reused in different parts of your application. Use modules to make your code more modular and reusable:

// Module 1
var myModule = (function() {
  var myVar = "Hello World";

  function myFunction() {
    console.log(myVar);
  }

  return {
    myFunction: myFunction
  };
})();


// Module 2
var myOtherModule = (function() {
  function myOtherFunction() {
    console.log("This is another module");
  }

  return {
    myOtherFunction: myOtherFunction
  };
})();

These are just a few examples of the best practices that JavaScript developers should follow.

By implementing these practices, JavaScript developers can improve the quality of their code and become better developers.

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Comments

[Corners 2 Wall]

1. If your target build ES6 or upper, there modules are always in strict mode
2. In my opinion, code should be write without comments, which describe HOW code should be work. It's mean, that you need simplify your algorithm or code base, or architecture or something else.... Cool thing if your code reads as book

[Dennis]

There are a lot of opinions on what comments should and shouldn't contain. I personally think that comments should not explain what the code does, because I can read that in the code. A comment that says what the code does is a code smell to me and an indication that something might've been set up more complex than necessary. I personally write comments in places to explain why the code works in a particular way. Usually when a dependency has a bug, I reference a workaround that I used. If I consciously introduce technical debt, I explain why I did that and how to make it better.

[Anthony Fung]

I agree with preferring why rather than what.

As an example, I recently wrote some C# code and needed to run some functions in parallel. The serial version used HashSets, but there is no concurrent equivalent. The workaround is to use a ConcurrentDictionary where keys must be unique. However, as it is a dictionary it also needs a value. The workaround was to just put 0 as the value, leaving a comment to say that only the key was important as there was no ConcurrentHashSet