Every programming language has its own style, designed to ease legibility and comprehension of each line of code. Some languages are stricter than others; JavaScript in its vanilla form is one of the looser languages in adhering to style. The Elements of Programming Style by Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger, first published in 1974, has a number of aphorisms that have helped shape not only coding standards but also programming languages themselves.
You may be familiar with the PEP-20 aphorisms from The Zen of Python:
- Beautiful is better than ugly.
- Explicit is better than implicit.
- Simple is better than complex.
- Complex is better than complicated.
- Flat is better than nested.
- Sparse is better than dense.
- Readability counts.
- Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
- Although practicality beats purity.
- Errors should never pass silently.
- Unless explicitly silenced.
- In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
- There should be one—...
