Speaker: Japh Thomson, Code Quality Standards And Best Practices

Japh Thomson

Japh is a freelance developer with over 12 years experience and a client list that includes the likes of Virgin Atlantic. So when Japh presents on code quality at WordCamp Gold Coast, you can be confident he knows what he’s talking about.

Japh’s presentation will discuss various coding standards, best practices, and resources to help improve your code. Japh aims to make this an interactive session by getting discussion going on how we can help each other maintain a high level of quality in our plugin and theme code in general.

His presentation will cover:

• Being aware of, and adhering to coding standards
• Knowing best practices for various tasks, such as use of Custom Post Types (CPT), extra database tables, saving options and some of the WordPress APIs (i.e. Settings API, HTTP API, Database APIs, etc)
• Feeling responsible for your code
• Getting help and peer review
• Don’t cut corners on time if you know it will impact on your Quality of Service (Qos).

We asked Japh a few questions to get the low down on his history with WordPress, WordCamp and coding standards.

You’ve been developing on WordPress for years – which is your personal favourite WordPress site you’ve developed and why?

Plugin development is probably the most fun, and my favourite WordPress plugin so far was for Virgin Atlantic’s vTravelled blog with John O’Nolan. It was a really fun process to plan the plugin, John had a great idea and loves to come up with challenges that I love to find solutions for. Of course, seeing my work on a great site like that is really fulfilling too!

What’s your WordPress development environment look like? eg. hardware, IDE/text-editor, version control

I pride myself on being able to work from anywhere, so my setup is very much geared for that. I develop on a MacBook Pro with a virtual machine running Ubuntu Server. My editor of choice at the moment is MacVim (I have used Coda and TextMate, but knowing Vim means I’m just as productive if I only have a command-line available). As far as version control goes, I use both Subversion and Git, depending on the needs of the client and project.

How do you maintain quality code and standards compliant code in your work?

One of my favourite quotes ever is “Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” I sure hope the guy maintaining the first code I ever wrote doesn’t fit that description!

I keep up-to-date on best practices through reading online, but mainly a lot of it comes with experience and working in teams where it’s extremely important for everyone to be able to understand each other’s code. It’s also great if you’re working on a large codebase to fit with the conventions the rest of the team has agreed on. So for WordPress plugins, themes, patches, etc. it’s a good idea to follow WordPress coding standards.

You’ve been to a few WordCamps in your time, what’s your favourite part of a WordCamp?

Getting a big bunch of people together to share experiences and help each other learn about a product we love using and a community we love being a part of… I love WordCamps!

I probably have two favourite parts (is that cheating?), catching up with people and meeting new ones, and listening to talks about things people are doing with WordPress.

What are you looking forward to most about WordCamp Gold Coast?

Listening to all the talks! There are always great speakers at WordCamps and new things to learn. What could be better than doing all that on the sunny Gold Coast with a great bunch of people?

Thanks Japh, we look forward to your session!

You can follow Japh on Twitter. You should also follow WordCamp Gold Coast on Twitter.