Software Engineering
12 May 2023Software Engineering
Coding Standards
Coding standards in software engineering are a set of guidelines for software engineers to follow. Follwing these guidelines ensures that the code they write will be consistent and of high quality. At first, I believed that coding standards were used to make code look pretty. Using the same coding standards makes your code organized, sleak, and easy to read. In addition, coding standards can actually be used to make someone a better programmer. Something like ESLint, checks for errors in your code as you type, and gives accurate and specific error messages. It also tells you whether or not things are unnesscary or redundant and will offer solutions. This ultimately makes you a better programmer.
Design Patterns
Design patterns are formalized best practices for a programmer to use. They make programming easier because they are essentially solutions to problems that occur often in coding. Often when coding something, programmers will run into problems that many before them have faced, and design patterns provide efficient solutions to these problems. These solutions are generalized enough that they can be applied to several problems that are not exactly the same, but are similar.
Ethics
Ethics are a big part of software enginnering. There are certain guilines that a software engineer must follow in order to be ethical in their field. For example, a software engineer should not take on a task if they know they are not fully competent to do it. Some of these guidelines can be a bit unclear however. Software engineers should also not create something that is harmful to the public. This is something that has ambiguity. How can one determine whether or not it will be harmful to the public. Something could be created with the intention of helping the general public, but it could be used unitentionally to cause harm. Facial recognition and security cameras in public can be used to find criminals which would be helpful to the general public. However, it could also be used to violate people’s privacy. Where should we as software engineers draw the line? I’ve learned that it is pretty much up to the software engineer to decide for themselves where they should draw the line and to figure out their own ethics. While we should all strive to meet the acm code of ethics, it is up to us to only create code that we can be proud of and comfortable with.