Why Building With Components is the Best Way to Ensure Clean Code

This content originally appeared on Bits and Pieces - Medium and was authored by Fernando Doglio

It might not be obvious, but components help a lot to keep your code clean and smell free

Web development has come a long way since its inception, with a multitude of technologies and methodologies emerging to make the process of building web applications faster, easier and more efficient.

However, with these advancements come new challenges, and one of the biggest challenges in modern web development is ensuring clean, maintainable code. Clean code means a well-structured, well-organized codebase that is easily maintainable and scalable.

I know, it sounds like the holy grail, something impossible to obtain, and maybe if we try to stay pure and faithful to that definition, we can’t. However, we can get damn close to perfection.

In this article, we’ll explore one of the most effective methods for ensuring clean code in web development — building with components. We’ll discuss what components are and why they’re important, how building with components ensures clean code, and we’ll highlight the benefits of using Bit to manage the whole process.

What are components?

Components are self-contained, reusable pieces of code that perform a specific function. They are used to build user interfaces and can be easily combined to create complex applications. A component can be thought of as a building block, where each block represents a specific functionality or feature. By using components, developers can build applications more efficiently, reduce code duplication, and make the codebase more maintainable.

Think of Lego bricks, each brick being a component, you can mix and match them to create complex constructions. Which in our case would be the final applications.

Component-based architecture is great because of the flexibility you gain by being able to take functionality out of an application and add it into a completely different one. Heck, they even simplify the whole task of having a unified visual and functional style for your applications across the company.

That is the theory at least, because we all know that most of the modern web libraries and frameworks already give us the concept of “component”. However, these libraries lack the tools you need to ensure these components can really be reused and collaborated on.

Without the right tooling, components end up being coupled to each other and to the project, which makes them really hard to share and reuse outside the project they were created for.

Tools like Bit solve this problem though, because, on top of the usual component, they add extra tooling to add versioning, manage dependencies automatically, facilitate collaboration and help you in sharing these components with the world.

4 reasons why components ensure clean code

How can an architectural pattern actually help you ensure clean code?

Let’s try to figure that one out.

You see, using components in your application actually ensures clean code in several ways:

First, components promote modularity. After all, each component is an individual entity, a module if you will, that you add into an application to provide functionality.

What this implies though, is that a large codebase can be broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This approach allows developers to focus on one specific area of the codebase without having to worry about the entire application.

This promotes separation of concerns, an easier-to-understand code base (you have to know and understand less code to understand the component), and, yes, clean code. By breaking down the codebase into smaller pieces, developers can easily identify and fix issues, making the codebase more maintainable.

Mastering Component-Driven Development: Improving Maintainability and Collaborative Efficiency

Second, components encourage code reuse. Again, this should not be news to anyone reading this by now. But let’s make sure we understand the impact of this on the quality of the code.

By creating reusable components, developers can use the same code in multiple parts of an application or even across different applications. This approach reduces the amount of code duplication, making the codebase smaller and more manageable.

Removing code duplication also means keeping your code clean of code smells. This is paramount if you’re looking to scale the number of components in your library and ensure that they can be used safely by anyone.

As a side note, Bit simplifies component reusability to the point of making it trivial and crazy not to use. If you’d like to know more about that, read this article on how to reuse React components across your projects.

How to reuse React components across your projects

Third, components make the codebase more testable. By breaking down the codebase into smaller, self-contained pieces, it becomes easier to write tests for each component. This approach ensures that each component performs its intended function correctly and makes it easier to identify and fix issues. Which translates, as you’ve guessed by now, into cleaner code.

The Importance of Testing Reusable Code with Higher Coverage

Finally, components make it easier to collaborate on a codebase. By using components, developers can work on different parts of an application simultaneously, without worrying about conflicts or issues with other parts of the codebase.

This approach makes it easier to scale development teams, reduce development time, and improve overall productivity. And how is that clean-code material? By itself is not, in fact, if you don’t do it properly this can lead to a big mess of spaghetti code that no one wants to play with.

However, given a tool that can tackle component versioning (to avoid overwriting existing versions) and code versioning (to empower developers to properly collaborate with each other with very little hustle), then you can sleep well at night knowing that your component’s code is spaghetti free.

Bit makes the process of collaboration very simple, not only inside your team but with others outside of it as well. Here’s a short case study:

How we Collaborate on our Composable Docs App

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Introducing Bit for Component-Driven Development

One of the biggest challenges of building with components is managing them. As the number of components in an application grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage them manually. Especially so if on top of having a big number of them, you have developers (or teams of devs) working on them at the same time.

This is where Bit comes in.

Bit is an open-source toolchain that provides developers with the tools for developing in components, and the cloud platform for hosting and collaborating on their components. It allows developers to create, share, and discover components, making it easier to build applications using components. Bit provides support for the web’s most common standards, including JavaScript, TypeScript, React and VueJS.

Using Bit, developers can create their own components or use existing ones from the bit.cloud community. They can also collaborate with other developers on the same components, making it easier to build applications together. Bit also provides a range of tools and services to help developers manage their components, including version control, documentation, and testing.

In the end, Bit is the only tool you’ll ever need to create your own components, share them with others and even collaborate on them with other devs. All of this while keeping an updated documentation and a healthy test suit. In other words, we’re getting to that “damn close to perfection” point I mentioned earlier.

Why would you want to use Bit for your components?

Using Bit provides several benefits to developers building their components.

It provides a central server to host and manage components, making it easier to find and reuse existing components. This approach reduces the amount of code duplication and ensures consistency across applications. Check out Bit.cloud, there you can search for and find all public components from the community. Once you find them, you can install them with a simple npm install command or through their own bit install or bit import commands.
Bit makes it easier to collaborate on components. Developers can work together on the same components, making it easier to build applications more efficiently. The tool abstracts git for you, so you don’t have to worry about version control but it’s there. You don’t have to worry about where the repo is located or how to properly push your code, Bit does it all for you through a simplified CLI tool.
Bit also provides version control, which ensures that changes made to a component are tracked and can be easily reverted if necessary. This makes it easier for developers to work together and reduces the risk of conflicts or issues arising. You can even version the code inside your application into a component while keeping it locally installed (without having to extract it and move it into the node_modules folder).
It provides a range of tools and services to help developers manage their components. These include documentation, testing, and version control. Documentation ensures that components are well-documented and easily understandable, making it easier for other developers to use them. The documentation includes the usual explanation but also clear installation instructions and live examples developers can tinker with. Testing ensures that each component performs its intended function correctly and reduces the risk of bugs and issues arising. Version control ensures that changes to components are tracked and can be easily reverted if necessary. And all of these tools are included as part of the publication flow, so any new component you try to share with Bit will go through all those steps before seeing the proverbial light of day.
Finally, Bit provides a community of developers who share their components and collaborate on building applications. This community provides a wealth of knowledge and resources for developers, making it easier to learn and improve their skills. It also provides a platform for developers to showcase their work and get feedback from others.

Conclusion

Building with components is one of the most effective ways to ensure clean code in web development.

By using components, developers can break down a large codebase into smaller, more manageable pieces, making it easier to maintain, test, and collaborate on.

Bit.cloud provides a central repository for managing components, making it easier to find and reuse existing ones, collaborate with other developers, and manage documentation, testing, and version control.

Using Bit provides several benefits to developers, including reducing code duplication and ensuring consistency across applications, which also translates into cleaner code all around.

If you’re not already using components in your web development projects, now is the time to start. And if you are, consider using Bit to take your component-based development to the next level.