Utah JS

At the September meeting we went over a list of code smells to watch out for and investigate.  Code smells are indications that something might be wrong and you should look deeper to see if it’s something that needs to be addressed in your code.

The list:

1. Duplicated code: identical or very similar code exists in more than one location.
2. Long method: a method, function, or procedure that has grown too large.
3. Large class: a class that has grown too large. See God object.
4. Too many parameters: a long list of parameters in a procedure or function make readability and code quality worse.
5. Feature envy: a class that uses methods of another class excessively.
6. Inappropriate intimacy: a class that has dependencies on implementation details of another class.
7. Lazy class / Freeloader: a class that does too little.
8. Contrived complexity: forced usage of overly complicated design patterns where simpler design would suffice.
9. Excessively long identifiers: in particular, the use of naming conventions to provide disambiguation that should be implicit in the software architecture.
10. Excessively short identifiers: the name of a variable should reflect its function unless the function is obvious.
11. Excessive use of literals: these should be coded as named constants, to improve readability and to avoid programming errors. Additionally, literals can and should be externalized into resource files/scripts where possible, to facilitate localization of software if it is intended to be deployed in different regions.
12. Arrow head code: a method that looks like a sideways arrow because of multiple levels of nested code.