Let’s face it. Good developers are elusive. Hiring developers who can write a code that is readable and digestible is considerably harder and yet continually sought after. No offense to the developer community here, I agree there are numerous developers who are also willing to code better and improve
As Martin Flower famously said,
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand”
The crux of the matter here is to convey how significant a qualitative & functional code is and the effect the other way around can have on the productivity of your software team, hamper the ability to collaborate better. Let me just put it this way
What is the use of hiring a developer based on code when your team cannot pull a request?
Hiring developers shouldn’t be solely based on the quality of the code but also its functionality
“That’s alright! But how do you ascertain a good coder from the rest?” - Hold on.
I totally get it
We all have been through this turmoil in figuring whether the code is worth its salt. How to go about code quality analysis when there are so many metrics and complexity involved?
We at Talscale have added a few quality metrics that are super important to analyze the quality of code for each project-based assessment
Important parameters to measure Code Quality using TalScale
There has been a paradigm shift in the hiring methodology. Project-based assessments or work-sample assessments as it is generally referred to have gained extreme importance. Bigger companies are hiring better developers with the help of carefully crafted assignments that simulate the work of the actual job. These parameters basically measure every written code from bug count to security, vulnerability, reliability, and maintainability issues. Each project code will be subjected to analysis based on these parameters and a rating is given based on the quality of the code.
1. Bug number
This parameter basically represents the number of bugs present in the code. A code that indicates zero bugs is deemed as a good code. Generally, more the number of bugs in the code, lesser the quality. Once code is fed in the Talscale, the analyzer gives you a bug count which can act as an important factor to decide the candidate’s ability
2. Security Hotspot
This is a special type of metric that identifies the sensitive areas of code. The security issues in the code can be anything from the usage of a sensitive API, weak algorithm, etc.
The more every company relies on building web applications to automate certain processes, the more security issues pop up. As a result, a code that is not sensitive to outside attackers and keeps the customer data secure the better for organizations. Therefore, the Security Hotspot metric in code quality analysis comes in handy to check the code for all possible issues.
A rating from A to E is given, where “A” means the code is best from the security point of view and an “E” corresponds to poor code which is not secure.
3. Code smells
This is an important code quality analysis metric that falls under the maintainability related issue. Any programmer can write a code as per his understanding but if the subsequent programmers can’t pick up the code from where it was left by the previous guy, it gets difficult to maintain.
In worst cases, the next guys can add up more errors as they play around a code that is difficult to understand. It also reflects a deeper problem of violation of design principles. It detects the regions of the code that can be better or rather hard to understand and complicated.
4. Vulnerability Number & Rating
Vulnerability number is basically the number of regions in the code that are prone to the external threat. Based on the number, a rating is provided. A poor rating in this corresponds to a potential risk where the security is compromised. A code that is vulnerable allows hackers to steal data, fiddle with your software or even wipe out everything.
The common types of vulnerabilities in any code can be Cross-site scripting (XSS), Injection, Buffer Overflow, and Broken Authentication.
Rating “A” means the code is not prone to any external threats and “E” denotes the code is highly prone to threats.
5. Maintainability rating
In layman terms, this metric indicates whether the code is easy to carry forward with modifications from product to product, future projects by any new programmer who works on it. As Cory House states “Code is like humor. When you have to explain it, it’s bad.” A better rating on Maintainability depicts the minimum risks associated with any changes being made to the code.
In a more technical sense, the rating is based on the ratio of the size of the codebase to the estimated time to fix all open Maintainability issues.
- <=5% of the time that has already gone into the application, the rating is A
- between 6 to 10% the rating is a B
- 11 to 20% the rating is a C
- 21 to 50% the rating is a D
- anything over 50% is an E
6. Reliability rating
This is a scoring mechanism that is based on the severity of bugs in the code. In general, it notes all the issues that are related to operational risks or takes the form of programming errors which cause workflow disruption of development teams.
Rating “A” denotes the code is very much reliable and reliability decreases as the rating go till “E”
7. Debt
This is one of those features that doesn’t hold direct relevance when it comes to Code quality report but it indicates the estimated time required to fix all the above issues related to Maintainability. The more time it takes to fix all the above issues, the poorer the quality of the code.
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Talscale Code Quality analysis report[/caption]
Still got blue devils measuring the code quality? Feel free to get in touch with us so that we can help you sort them out in an effective manner. In case you want to try our technical assessments, we would love to have a conversation with you!
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