Get rid of the squiggles

The specifics of this tip will vary based on what editor you use, but the underlying principle is true for all of them.

I use PHPStorm as my daily editor, and it has a bunch of built-in static analysis features to detect a range of problems.

Some are as minor as a potential misspelling in a variable name or code comment. Others are much more serious, like security issues or logic bugs.

These different kinds of errors often show up inline with the code as a "squiggle" underline of different colors, depending on the severity.

I'm totally guilty of this at times, but it's easy to let your eyes glaze over these squiggles and start to ignore them.

Eventually, you become completely numb to the feedback and might actually miss some more serious issues.

Instead, I recommend tackling them as you see them. Fix the typo, or add the word to your dictionary. Tighten up the equality comparison. Remove the unused variable.

Other times, you might disagree with the recommendation. And that's fine too! We're the humans here! We don't have to just blindly do what the IDE tells us to make an error go away.

But in those cases, I'll adjust PHPStorm's inspection setting to not warn me about it. I still don't just let the squiggle keep staring at me for the life of the project.

What file do you have open in your editor right now? How many squiggles are there?

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Static analysis is useful beyond editor feedback. Would you like help setting up tooling to make your project more reliable? Get in touch!