The Importance of Code Quality

What is Code Quality?

Code quality impacts an organization in a number of ways, from the quality of the user experience to the security of an application. The problem is that code quality is often difficult to measure and challenging to improve at scale across a large number of development teams.

Without the right tools and processes, however, software can slowly accumulate code deficiencies that impact software quality. That’s why it’s crucial to prevent code quality issues at the source before they’re introduced by developers.

In this post, we’ll cover what code quality is, how to measure code quality, and why it’s important for developers to write quality code. We’ll also discuss ways that code quality impacts secure development and how an automated code checker can improve both the quality and security of software.

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Code quality explained

Quality code is often defined as code that functions as intended for end-users without any deficiencies. While code quality is measured differently by every development team, in general it comes down to a subjective measure of common factors like maintainability, testability, readability, security, and more. Some automated tools can also analyze source code and provide a code quality score based on a number of metrics that measure complexity and functionality.

Writing clean code – as developers like to call quality code – involves a number of best practices during development. By following standard conventions, reducing complexity, improving old code whenever new code is added, and more, developers can eliminate “code smells” and build a higher-quality, more secure product.

The challenge with code quality is that developers are also under pressure to deliver features quickly, so there are often tradeoffs between clean code and time-to-market. Let’s take a closer look at why code quality is important for developers and how development teams can improve code quality without slowing development velocity.

Why is code quality important for developers?

Code quality is crucial for developers because poorly written code can lead to technical debt and security issues. Technical debt refers to the idea that bugs and code deficiencies can accrue over time to the point where the cost of new code changes becomes much greater. By making short-term sacrifices in code quality, it becomes more difficult to deliver quality software later on.

Many development teams implement measures to ensure high code quality like peer code reviews, pair programming, functional testing, and more. These are manual methods to identify and remediate quality issues, which means they don’t scale well and often fail to pick up on many quality defects. That said, these methods are useful for spreading knowledge around code quality and security best practices.

One of the best ways to improve code quality, however, is using an automated code checking tool that can scan the source code against a set of standard best practices to suggest potential areas for improvement. By implementing code checking early in the development process, the cost of fixing bugs and security issues can drop significantly as well. That means a code checker that integrates directly with an IDE can is a great way to reduce the friction for improving code quality.

Code quality as a basis for secure development

Code quality in itself is important because it impacts the user experience if there are bugs or other application performance issues. In addition, the quality of code can have a direct impact on how secure an application is, as well. For example, even minor defects, such as not validating user input could leave an application exposed to malicious actors and larger attacks.

Further Reading: Secure Code Review - 8 Security Code Review Best Practices

A great place to start when it comes to fostering secure development is through a security champions program. When security teams support and train developers, organizations can bring security to every development conversation, including during code reviews and pair programming. The problem is code reviews are difficult to do well, especially when the application security landscape changes rapidly.

Security champions can also encourage the use of automated security tools that improve the security posture of an application without slowing down development. Rather than manually reviewing code, it’s often a better idea to use a security scanning tool that can leverage an up-to-date, accurate vulnerability database. This ensures that developers are pushing secure code without having to constantly research newly discovered vulnerabilities.

Code quality and security are both key considerations because they ultimately impact the end-user. Poor quality software contains bugs and other issues that lead to a poor user experience, while security vulnerabilities put user data and privacy at risk. That’s why organizations should build automated tooling that ensures code quality directly into the development process.

Snyk code checker for better code quality

Snyk’s Code Checker can scan application code for quality and security issues so that developers can make fixes directly within their IDE. By remediating issues on the spot, development teams can immediately improve the quality and security posture of their software – without slowing down development velocity.

More specifically, Snyk Code Checker uses an AI-powered engine that has scanned over 500,000 code repositories for patterns in common code issues. These insights are brought directly to developers in real-time so that issues can be fixed immediately when they’re introduced. The algorithm is constantly learning new vulnerabilities and code deficiencies from open source projects. That means every time developers scan their code, they’re able to make quality improvements.

Snyk Code currently supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, and Python during every stage of development. The tool can also be integrated directly with IntelliJ, PyCharm, and Visual Studio (VS) Code so developers can get recommendations while they’re coding in their favorite IDE. By shifting code scanning left, development teams can ensure their code is clean and secure from the start.

The best part? You can scan your code for free and see the results in seconds.