At some point while I was pursuing my math degree, I realized that there were a plethora of subtle actions professors did, something that essentially every professor knew to do. No, it was not to assign midterms all within the same week. Instead, it was hidden within their notation. Some examples of this included writing “3y” instead of “3 times y” or using Greek letters instead of capital or lowercase letters. It was rather a interesting observation considering how we grew up learning to use the latter of each situation. It was not until later on when I found myself doing the same that I realized the reasoning behind it: math is a language.
The similarities between mathematics and coding standards can be more easily depicted when both are thought of as a language. Expressions written using math symbols are the way they are because they make sense given the order they come in. In a way, we can treat a semicolon at the end of a line of code like a period to a sentence. Coding standards are the criterion by which we code so that if we were to give someone else our code, not only would it make sense, but it would also be easier to read than had the same code been written in a personalized manner. To me, coding standards are the reason why code, like math, is a universal language. Although these methods of writing code may be considered “restrictive” in how one writes code, think of it this way: would you rather read well-formatted code or code entirely written on a single line?
Using ESLint alongside IntelliJ has not made too much of an impact on my code. During high school, my teachers indirectly taught us how to format our code by teaching code written in compliance to coding standards. Because of that, I had little to no ESLint errors when completing any coding assignments. Essentially, the provided green checkmark simply reminds me of how a good first impression can change how you interpret something for an extremely long time. In my case, it was my high school teacher’s way of coding that has made a lasting impact on the way I code even to this day. I hope that as our projects get more complex and as we explore other coding languages that my current format stays consistently align with ESLint’s styling.