The LIFT Principle: How to Apply Coding Practices to Instantly Boost Your Personal Productivity
Quick Introduction.
If you are reading these lines, it may be because you’re matching one of the profiles below, either you are:
– Into the IT world, so you may have some coding knowledge.
– Interested in productivity and want to learn about new techniques.
Well, today you found the perfect match between these two worlds. Let’s go!
Where Is It Coming From?
The LIFT principle was defined by Google as part of the Angular coding style guides.
It defines good practices for organizing your code structure and increase developer efficiency.
These guidelines are followed by most of the Angular developers at Capitole, but let me tell you something:
It not only applies to coding, but also to personal productivity.
Let’s deep dive into this principle.
The Principle Explanation
The main goal of this style guide is to be able to locate your code and identify the pieces you need at a glance.
LIFT acronym stands for:
- Locate: Do make locating your code an easy and intuitive task. You must be able to find files quickly, specially when not remembering the name.
- Identify: The file name must allow you to know what it contains. It must be descriptive.
- Flat: Keep the folder structure as flat as possible. No one likes to search for a file through several levels of folders.
- Try to be DRY: Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY). Following this guideline is important, but not crucial. Sometimes it will make your work easier to repeat a name, go for it.
As you may have noticed, all these guidelines apply to coding but also to personal and work organization activities.
Conclusions
Try always to follow the LIFT Principle for organizing your information.
If all these guidelines are new for you, feel free to start with one so you can learn through
the process. Once you’ll feel the productivity boost, you’ll want to put in place the rest.
Oscar Soto – Project Manager and Consultant Manager at Capitole
