A linter is a program that anylizes your source code to detect common bugs or other areas for improvement.
Most modern languages come with a wide variety of linters and other static analysis tools available. Pick one. Or pick ten.
If you’re not already doing so, simply adding a linter as the first check in your CI or build pipeline is usually the simplest, cheapest single step you can do to improve code quality, as it can provide a sort of machine-operated code review for you.
While what’s available depends on each language, in general you can, and should, find linters to detect and warn about bugs such as:
- SQL injections
- Common memory leaks
- Uninitialized or unused variables
Additionally, you may want to use linters to detect more stylistic problems that commonly lead to bugs or confusing code:
- Shadowed variables
- Use of conventional naming
- Spell checking of comments or inline documentation
- Unnecessary type conversions
- Excessive indentation
- Unnecessary or redundant conditionals
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