Establishing code standards

So, now that I’ve convinced you how code standards can reduce conflict in your team, focus code reviews, and guide refactoring efforts, let’s talk about where these standards come from and how we adopt them in our teams.

Collective code standards

Every software development team already has code standards.

I say this because each software development team already has, by definition, at least one developer. Every developer, whether they’re aware of it or not, has their own set of internalized code standards.

They may not have thought about their preferences or be able to list them out, but if you look at each developer on your team and the code they write in isolation, there will be a certain amount of consistency to it.

The problem teams encounter is not that they don’t have standards, but rather that they have too many standards. Each developer operates from their own internal set of standards and preferences and...