The project I’ve been working on lately has grown considerably since I first started it. That’s a pretty good sign that I’m being productive and producing features and content… but it is at the same time a little bit scary.

This project happens to be my first web app written with AngularJS, and the largest and most complex JavaScript code base I’ve ever written. I think its pretty understandable that some of my code is a mess.

Messy code is inevitable for inexperienced programmers. You need to make a mess before you can understand what a mess is and how you got there. The real problem is when you make a mess, know you have one, but have no idea what clean code looks like or how to write it.

Enter the Style Guide

My messy code was just reaching the point where it was noticeably affecting my productivity when I found the Adventures in Angular podcast. In one episode, the panel introduced an AngularJS-specific coding style guide posted on GitHub by John Papa.

It wasn’t some magic wand tool that I could wave and my code would be tidy. It was better than that. It introduced certain concepts and patterns that would keep my code readable, understandable, and easy to maintain. Every style rule also include examples of the pattern to be avoided, what could/should look like, and detailed explanations of why its better that way. It helped me clean up my code and avoid writing any more messy code.

Since reading this guide, I start every new code file by following some of the basic rules from this guide. I still have some messy code lying around. So, whenever I have to touch some of my older code I take a few minutes to refactor the existing code to follow the rules. I try to make a habit of putting that refactoring step into it’s own git commit, so that looking back I can see what changes are new code, and what was refactoring.

I had to screw up a little first in order to see the value of this guide, and to even understand the concepts in it. I wouldn’t say that this guide is for developers that are brand new to AngularJS. However, if you’ve been using Angular long enough to have a firm grasp of the basics, reading this guide will give you a push in the direction of cleaner code.

TL;DR

Read John Papa’s AngularJS Style Guide. It teaches you to write cleaner AngularJS code.