Linters & code standards

Linter

As per recommendation by the teacher, I've decided to use (ESlint)[https://eslint.org/] as the default linter for this project. ESlint helps users finding problems in your code by analyzing javascript (and typescript) files in your project. Once an issue is found, the user is presented with several options, such as ignoring the problem or solving the issue automatically.

Using a linter is beneficial for your project as it forces you and your collaborators to follow one style guide. Having that in place, it cancels out syntax and formatting issues when you're debugging.

Sources

Getting Started with ESLint. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2020, from https://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/getting-started

Code standards

As for code standards, I had been going through different sets of criteria: Google's, Airbnb's, and Standard's.

Feature	Airbnb	Google	Standard
Tabs	-	2	-
Semicolon	Required	Required	No
Trailing Commas	Required	Required	No
Template strings	Prefer	No preference	No preference
Import Extensions	None	No preference	No preference
Object Curly Spacing	Yes	None	Consistent
Array Bracket Spacing	None	None	-
Parentheses Around Arrow Function Arg	-	Required	-
JSDocs	-	Required	-
Console statements	-	None	None
Underscored functions	None	Allowed	Allowed
Space before function parentheses	None	None	Required

As seen in the table above, it's obvious that Standard is very loose with their conventions, it leaves too much room to make mistakes or be inconsistent. With Standard out of the race, it's Airbnb vs. Google. In my testing with both conventions in my project files, I noticed that Airbnb's style uses template strings. It is not much of an issue, but it is (in my opinion) unneeded. It does allow flexibility in your code, but enforcing makes no sense. Other than that, Airbnb's convention forced object deconstruction more aggressively than Google:

* Airbnb
  const { firstName } = req.body;

* Google
  const firstName = req.body.firstName;

It is nice to have if it were consistent with es6 module imports (import { parts } from 'module';), but it's not. And for those reasons, I've chosen to use Google's conventions over Airbnb's.

Sources

Uistephen. (2018, June 19). Linting ES2015+ — ESLint with StyleGuides: Google, AirBnB, Common. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@uistephen/style-guides-for-linting-ecmascript-2015-eslint-common-google-airbnb-6c25fd3dff0