newbie_coding_patterns.md

Naming everything in a variable before using it

Examples

var whetherToReturnTheResult = true;
return whetherToReturnTheResult;

This coding pattern is naming everything to a variable, regardless of whether you need to save it. This is usually rooted in a few magical beliefs:

"I need to declare this variable"

This can be from people who have tinkered in other languages and used to pay a lot of attention to their int and float declarations etc etc: they expect that any value requires maintenance.

try/catch around everything

Examples

for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  try {
    // all of the application code here
  } catch(e) {
    console.log('I have no idea what went wrong');
  }
}

This is rooted in a few magical beliefs:

• A caught error is better than an uncaught one
• Failing silently is better than failing loudly
• I don't know what kinds of errors my code will produce

Everything has to be a member of some object

Examples

function MyProgram() {
  this.someTemporaryVariable = 5;
  if (this.someTemporaryVariable) {
    // ugh
  }
}

This is rooted in an "Object-Oriented Education", usually in Java or something like that: it avoids the use of scope for any value and instead assigns every value, even temporary results, to an object.