Washing your code

What’s inside?

• PDF and EPUB formats
• 20 years of experience packed into 400 pages
• 4600 lines of unit-tested code examples
• Based on production code
• Up to date: ECMAScript 2024
• No bullshit approach

Table of contents

• Avoid loops

  Iterating over collections and why traditional loops, such as for or while, may not be the best way of doing that

• Avoid conditions

  Crafting good conditions and simplifying code by removing unnecessary conditions

• Avoid reassigning variables

  Improving code readability by making it easier to understand what variables are do and how they are used in the code

• Avoid mutation

  Why mutation hinders code readability and what can we do about it

• Avoid comments

  Writing useful comments, when to comment our code, and when it’s better not to

• Naming is hard

  How clear names make it easier to understand the code, and how to improve naming in our code

• Divide and conquer, or merge and relax

  Splitting code into functions and modules, when the right time is to introduce an abstraction, and when it’s better to sleep on it

• Don’t make me think

  All the different ways programmers like to write clever code, and why we should avoid clever code as much as possible

• Code style

  Which code styles are actually improve readability and which are merely preferences that don ’t matter much

• Lint your code

  How linters can help us maintain a consistent and modern codebase, and promote some of the techniques discussed in the book

• Autoformat your code

  How tools can make our lives easier by formatting code for us

• Learn your code editor

  Different techniques for editing code and customizing our environment to make our work more efficient and less tiring

• Other techniques

  Make impossible states impossible

  Don’t try to predict the future

  Become a code scout

  Write testable code

  Write greppable code

  Avoid not invented here syndrome

  Avoid cargo cult programming

  Debug code with emojis

  Go for a walk or talk to a rubber duck

Techniques & patterns

Here’s a list of all the techniques and patterns described in the book.

• 2-minute rule

• Algorithm deduplication

• A/HC/LC pattern

• Arrange-Act-Assert

• Array method chaining

• Campsite rule

• Colocation

• Comments with examples

• Condition expansion

• Data normalization

• defaultProps for testing React components

• Dependency injection

• Discriminated unions

• Early returns, or guard clauses

• Enums

• Explicit mutation

• Finite-state machines

• Greppable code

• Hack comments

• Hiding complexity

• Implicit assertions

• Inline refactoring

• Iteration using array methods

• Keep it simple, stupid (KISS)

• Named function parameters

• Optional function  parameters

• Parallel coding

• Range conditions

• Readable numbers

• Reducing variables’ lifespan

• Rubberducking

• Sections, paragraphs, phrases

• Separation of “what” and “how”

• Separation of code that changes often

• Single responsibility principle

• Sweeping under the rug

• Tables and maps

• Todo comments

• Write everything twice, or we enjoy typing (WET)

• You aren’t gonna need it (Yagni)

Code smells & antipatterns

Here’s a list of all the code smells and antipatterns described in the book.

• 100% code coverage

• Abbreviations and acronyms

• Array.reduce() method

• Barrel files

• Broken windows theory

• Cargo cult programming

• Default exports

• Function parameters mutation

• Don’t repeat yourself (DRY)

• Hungarian notation

• Monster utility files

• Negative booleans

• Nested ternaries

• Not invented here syndrome (NIH)

• Magic numbers

• Mutating array methods

• Pascal-style variables

• Premature abstraction, or premature generalization, or speculative generality

• Reusing variables

• Shortcuts

• Single return law

• Yoda conditions

What readers are saying?

Frequently asked questions

Have a question?

Write me at [email protected], @[email protected], @sapegin.bsky.social, or open an issue.