A professional is someone that nakes a living off of a specific skillset. Part of any skillset is having a set of standards that govern what you produce as part of your skillset. Standards are good for several reasons the least of which is that standards create a minimum level of quality that needs to be met. Quality of the delivered product is important for any professional. A quality product shows repeatable value and can lead to future business from the same clients or help gain new clients as word of quality work spreads. Coding standards are a way to ensure quality of deliverable code products.
Part of quality code is readability, readable code is clean, concise and its meaning is either explained by the code itself or by a minimum of comments needed to explain the logic that governs the code. Cleanly written code that follows a standard is key for a prodution environment as it fosters productivity on projects that have multiple contributors. On an individual basis, clean standardized code lets you pickup a project later on for revisions without having to re-parse your code after a long period of not working on it. It also enables you to learn other coding languages faster by making the syntax of that language understandable through ease of use and readability.
Many IDEs have functions that can be used to monitor wirtten code and make sure that it adheres to a desired standard. In the Intellij IDEA we are using ESLint to make sure that the code we write follows the UH Manoa ICS standards. So far it has been useful in pointing out typos and common eorrors like forgotten commas, or semi colons. AS for the overall format of the code I haven’t had too much trouble with it as earlier experience with code has taught me always type in a clear formatted way with consistent spacing for functions, loops, statements and brackets. Earlier experience in other coding class with other students have shown me whatothers who are more lax in standards generate. Non indented code being the most common, and leaving out something that seems minor like indentation has a huge impact on readability. Without the indentation you have to take extra time to line up each loop, statement and bracket to make sure everything is as it should be. This extra time makes bug fixing harder to do and adds up over time with each revision. Adhereing to standards makes things easier and saves on time and money in the long run. Professional standards for professional work.