Working with a React app (or web development, in general) is a funny thing when it comes to errors and warnings. I developed a bad habit fairly early in CS290: the console’s warnings and error’s aren’t really “real”. Or at least, they aren’t real in the same sense as an indentation issue or missing semicolon would be in Python or C++. The web app still compiles, runs, and all (or most) of the functionality works just fine. So what if a list is missing keys or there’s an unused variable? My app works fine, what’s the point of adding keys to a list or making sure the yellow squiggly variables are commented-out or deleted?
As it turns out, Github workflows cares deeply about such warnings. It’s been a tough but rewarding experience using workflows for the capstone project, as it’s forcing me to be a more careful programmer and check my development build to ensure I’m not wasting time and memory with unused variables or making other “small mistakes”. However, I can understand in the bigger picture why such warnings and errors exist. In a small project with limited logic and processing, what’s the big deal if there’s some wasted time and memory instantiating unused variables? But at some point, as a project size grows, I can see that not only would a bunch of wasted energy create a potential problem for the app itself, but also create nightmare for programmers.
I’ve found myself taking a couple days break between programming this project or personal projects and, due to wasted variables or other bad habits (like commenting out code that “I don’t need now but might need later”) can create immense issues for readability and make following program logic more difficult than originally intended. So although I might have gone through CS290 and my first few web projects thinking that I know better than the console, workflows has been forcing me out of my bad habits by making me be more careful about writing clean code.