Today while I was wondering about a question I've been asked several times, decided I needed a better way to express and organize my overall explanation.

The question itself was the following:

What are some ways that you have ensured that a codebase is well structured and maintainable?

Although it might sound as simple as just answering the typical points, I've found that it's not enough to repeat every time the same thing. I just needed a think-once use-along solution I could share whenever needed.

And that's how I came up with the DOTS Pattern ✨

D(ocument) your implementations

Programming doesn't only consist of just "making the code work". Functioning code is just a part of the whole development process you are involved and whether that might satisfy your boss (or customer if you are freelancing), you should always consider saving your future self when you are asked by your actual same boss or customer on why your code is producing X output when it should do Y.

Also you might notice an overall improvement in your code readability because the need to document will force you to choose easier implementations, avoding the bad habit of over-engineering.

O(rganize) yourself

But what does it mean to organize myself? When do I know I'm organized enough? It may be hard to answer those questions, and even harder try to find one unique solution for all kinds of tasks.

There are some tips like writing down the requirements, create an implementations roadmap or even following the Documentation-Driven Development pattern.

However as stated above, there isn't a clear answer to the question. You just need to do whatever you feel most confortable to organize yourself.

T(est) everything

Make sure you fit into your development workflow the testing step, although it might feel hard to explain at a first why to invest extra valuable time on testing something that does already work, you may find more than one surpirse when indeed the implementation does not match one of the requirements, or even worse, breaks something that is already working. Although it may not be critical for MVPs, implementing the testing step from the beginning may allow you to split things better.

If you feel unconfortable writing tests don't worry, you might not be the only one out there, that's because testing is hard.

S(tandarize) your codebase

I know you like using tabs, we all love tabs, but seems that the project you are working on is using spaces. What should you do then?

Of course the answer is not getting rid of the project, please... 🙈

It's very important when collaborating in a project to negotiate standards with the rest of the team. It would be really hard to implement, fix or document anything in a codebase that is using very different programming tonalities.

We are lucky to live in a modern era and some developers have invested their valuable time to help you avoid thinking about this and focus in code: we have linters and formatters!

But make sure they are properly configured and working in your environment before pushing a single commit! You can also setup some commit hooks to automate this.

Summing up

So if you are now ever asked about code maintainability and scalability, what would you answer?

Give me some DOTS!