Lint is a tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. It has been around for as long as I’ve been doing JavaScript. Despite this, and despite the fact that it’s used by teams with great reputations, it is still not widely known or understood.
I’m going to outline the pros and cons of linting and how to go about it. By the end of reading this post you should have a good idea of what lint is, why it’s useful and how to get started with it.
This post assumes a basic familiarity with the command line and npm.
Everyone is talking about linting these days. But why? What are the benefits and pitfalls of linting? Should you lint your code? If so, how much?
In this post I’ll be going over some of the basics and history of linting to help you decide if you should be using a linter or not.
What Is Linting?
Lint is a tool that examines source code for potential problems such as bugs, security vulnerabilities, and stylistic errors. It can be a program or set of programs that analyze your code in a variety of ways and give you feedback on the results. It was originally developed for C programming and has since been expanded for use with other languages. Linting can be done manually or automatically, where the latter performs analysis during development and alerts developers when they make an error.
Benefits Of Linting
Linting can help identify problems in code before it goes live. This helps keep projects running smoothly and allows for less debugging time which means faster development! When not performed correctly though, this can lead to longer build times or even worse: unused CSS files occupying space in production builds causing bloated bundles (more on this later).
When you first start programming, the task of writing clean code seems inconsequential. You write the code, it works and you move on to the next thing. But as you grow as a programmer, so does your knowledge of the trade, and what seems like a trifling problem in one moment becomes a major issue in another.
Linting as a practice is a reflection of this growth. Linting is the process of running a program that analyzes your code for potential errors and problems. The linter will catch most issues before you even run your code. This includes obvious syntax errors, but also extends to logical errors such as using the wrong type of comparison operator or forgetting to declare variables.
While it may seem trivial to catch these errors before they happen when they are so obvious, linting becomes a must-have tool when you start tackling more ambitious projects where you have multiple moving parts and higher levels of complexity. It’s easy to forget to declare variables when writing small programs in one file, but once you start working with objects and classes on larger projects, linting becomes an invaluable asset for catching tiny mistakes that could cause huge issues down the line.
The process of linting can be time consuming and expensive.
Linting is done by setting up rules to make sure code follows a certain standard. The rules can range from basic to complex. A basic rule may be making sure all variable names are camel case. A more complex rule may be making sure that variable names are camel case and if it isn’t, the program will give an error message.
Linting comes into play when engineers want to make sure the code they write is clean, efficient, and works as intended. Linting gives developers benefits such as:
increase readability
less bugs
easier debugging
cleaner code
Just to name a few!
Lint is a tool that helps with finding bugs, inconsistencies, and potential security issues in your code.
There are various linting tools out there including:
* JSLint
* JSHint
* ESLint
* Closure Linter
* Gofmt
Linting tools generally have rules that they can enforce programmatically. These rules have to be followed in order for the program not to show an error. There are some universally agreed upon rules (such as not using undefined variables) but most of them are a matter of style. Using tabs instead of spaces, for example, is a personal choice. Some people might prefer tabs while others prefer spaces. It is therefore up to you to set up your linter with the rules you want to enforce.
Is your code riddled with errors? Do you want to write better code? Well, you’re in luck! Linting is here to help.
Linting is the process of analyzing source code to flag programming errors, bugs, stylistic errors, and suspicious constructs. The term originates from a Unix utility that examined C language source code.
A lint program often has options to control which problems it looks for and how pedantic it is in its analysis. By default, the most common and important warnings are displayed. Some linters can fix certain classes of error automatically.
Linters are an essential tool for software development across all programming languages, from JavaScript and Python to C++ and Java. Linters provide feedback on:
Code style issues such as excess whitespace, use of tabs rather than spaces, trailing commas in arrays or objects, etc.
Syntax errors (e.g., missing semi-colons)
Semantic errors (e.g.: assignment in conditional statement)
Logic errors (e.g., type conversion with == operator)
Unnecessary or unreachable code
Linting is a tool developers can use to check their code against certain style rules. Linters are programs that inspect source code, flagging statements that violate particular stylistic guidelines. This might include checking for unused variables, trailing commas, and semicolon usage.
Most linters also support the addition of custom rules, so you can configure it to look for anything you want. You can also install plugins or create your own custom plugins and share them with others. The easiest way to get started is to use a plugin for your text editor or IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
The benefits of linting are not always obvious to new developers who are still learning how to write good code. But as application complexity grows, the benefits become more apparent. It’s much easier to spot problems when they’re highlighted in real time than when you have a massive pile of errors to sift through at the end of the day. Linters often come with other useful tools as well, like being able to automatically fix certain types of errors.
Linters also make it easier for teams to collaborate by enforcing style conventions across multiple projects and developers. They can be particularly useful when onboarding new team members who might have different coding styles than existing team members.