The Art and Mechanics Of Readable Code

We covered how to add static analysis with PHPStan in the previous issue to ensure our code is parsable by the interpreter and to make full use of argument and return type hints throughout our application. Our code is also how we communicate with colleagues and contributors who have to interface, extend, and maintain it. We should put some effort into making it easy for them to understand how it works, trace its execution, and find potential problems. Another valuable tool to reduce friction and boost adoption is to use a formatter or beautifier to enforce some coding standards. We'll look at PHPCodeSniffer and then explore how we can run it frequently for immediate feedback.