Grammar Police
21 Sep 2023
Deep Clean
Right before the fall semester started, I did a deep clean of my bedroom. I had finally picked up the stray clothes off the floor, put books back in their shelves, vacuumed, dusted — the whole nine yards. As I stood in my now spotless room, which suddenly felt way bigger and brighter than it had the day before, I couldn’t help but think, “Was I really living like that for the entire summer?”
I get the same feeling as ESLint checks my code for errors, and finds a lot of them. It’s not like I was trained to comply with ESLint’s rules from the very beginning of my coding journey, so of course it would take time to adjust. It still gets annoying at times. Like when I open up a new file, so sure of what I want I want to write and those red, squiggly lines appear to point out how the function I just started working on is defined but never used. Like, come on. I know it’s just doing its job but it ruins my momentum and immediately makes me backtrack.
Grammar Police
If Javascript is the coding language, then I guess ESLint is the coding grammar. Just like any spoken language, there are patterns you have to conform to if you want to truly sound fluent. As I’ve used these coding standards, my “broken Javascript” became pretty apparent and I’ve realized how important this sort of discipline is.
Previously, when it came to debugging my code, sometimes my efforts to fix simple errors would turn into huge messes. I had a tendency to throw anything and everything at my code to make things right. And even if I fixed things to a point where my code didn’t generate any errors, my inconsistent formatting and unnecessary additions made it hard to read. With ESLint, I have to be more methodical and intentional with what I write, and as a result, I do feel like I’m gaining a better understanding of Javascript as a whole. It used to feel like I was wasting my time deciphering hieroglyphs, but now I can get through my code with the same ease as reading English.
Growing Pains
I’d like to think that after a few months, I’ll have adapted to the coding standards to a point where I no longer get red errors telling me that I have to add a space between everything. After I get through the growing pains, it’ll become second nature to me. I think that within a month of being introduced to and using Javascript, I’ve become quite comfortable with the common vocabulary and syntax, but ESLint will be what pushes me to fluency.