How often do you test a project before you deploy it? Quality assurance should be a major milestone of every project you create. There are plenty of automated testing tools out there like Cypress.io, Mocha, and Jasmine. These platforms efficiently test your code end to end, but before this step, try static code analysis.
What is Static Code Analysis?
Static code analysis is done by examining your code without running the program. Again, there are tools to help you do this based on the language you wish to test. This process helps you understand the code structure as well as adhere to standards. This step often gets skipped due to strict deadlines. Not to mention the fact that developers are expected to churn out code as quickly as possible. Although static analysis takes a bit of time, it saves you a headache down the road, ensuring quality code.
Static analysis reveals errors that may not show up until weeks or months after deployment. Without static analysis, these errors present themselves in production and cost a lot of time and money to fix. Once you perform static analysis, begin dynamic code analysis to find less obvious bugs. Dynamic analysis involves testing a running program. Static and dynamic analysis should be a part of your testing regimen. Skip either step and you risk a future upset for you and your client.
Benefits of Static Code Analysis
If quality assurance isn’t enough to convince you that static analysis is important, here are a few more advantages to using this process:
Security
Static analysis catches bugs that could potentially cause serious crashes. While static analysis isn’t a replacement for common security practices, it exposes the easy-to-fix security issues that might’ve otherwise been overlooked. In addition, this process enforces industry standards for security. This will free up more time to focus on higher-level issues as opposed to fixing a bunch of little bugs after deployment.
Customer Relations
In the same vein as security, a crash or data breach could irritate clients and deter leads. It’s quite a controversy when customers’ personal information is leaked or clients can’t access their website because of a crash. When your code breaks, you lose customers and conversions, not to mention it’s generally not a good look.
Standardization
Most static analysis tools adhere to standardized rules for security and structure. These rules are in place to ensure safety compliance. In addition, static analysis is a great practice for junior developers, as it promotes a level of consistency and allows them to study and understand the basic code structure.
Time management
While static code analysis does add yet another step, and another tool, to the deployment process, it’s necessary. “Slow and steady wins the race,” as they say. Although there is more and more pressure to increase turn around for developers, more code doesn’t mean good code. Take some time to examine the code for bugs and structure inconsistencies. Would you rather spend extra time ensuring a solid product or spend the time fixing little problems later?
Testing has always been a vital step in our deployment process. We test our code using Cypress.io, which has thorough documentation. In addition, we test the functionality of the final product on all major browsers using Browserstack. We’re always looking for ways to improve our processes, and static code analysis will certainly take our testing to the next level. Talk to us about your next development project and how we can help improve your processes!
