Chapter 3: Coding Practices for Dreamweaver Development

Overview

The bane or boon, depending on your point of view, of every programmer is coding practices. The time it takes to make sure your program code adheres to your corporate code-development standard may seem ludicrous and all-consuming. The benefit of such work isn't readily apparent to most developers, especially those relatively new to the industry. However, seasoned and wise developers will tell you that there is no substitute for making sure your code, whether it be for compiled applications, web development, or stored procedures, is legible, understandable, and easy to follow-especially when that code needs to be modified six months after its creation to add a new feature to the system.Unfortunately, most developers and, indeed, many companies don't have or enforce a coding practice standard that provides an easy way for other developers to "pick up and run with" a set of code. But you'll find, with a little upfront preparation and planning, you can make sure the code you create is informative, clear, and concise. By establishing a set of coding practices that you follow in every piece of code you create, you'll make sure that not only can other developers modify your code in the future, but that even you can make sense of what you wrote a year after you released the system.

We're going to cover some guidelines for coding practices in this chapter. We say guidelines because there are no hard-and-fast standards for coding practices-coding practices are as varied as the developers that create the code, and, therefore, what follows is necessarily subjective opinion. So take what we tell you here and apply it to your work environment, letting it guide you into a consistent coding standard that you follow religiously! And there's the key to success in following coding practices-consistency.