Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer
With the infinite amount of tutorials and infrastructure services out there nowadays, writing code really isn't hard - Just getting things to work is much easier than ever before. This means that if you want to stand out as a software engineer, you need to write much better code than almost everybody else.
Every engineer needs high code quality, especially at Big Tech companies like FAANG where even the slightest mistake can hurt hundreds of thousands of users and cost millions of $$. After going through this course, you will:
- 🔎 Understand what good code looks like (and doesn’t look like)
- 🌱 Set up the right growth mentality around code quality
- đź’» Learn how to submit a quality pull request
- 🍝 Avoid common messy code patterns
Now you might be looking at this and thinking, "I need to move fast, I don't have time to write the perfect code". This is a very understandable misconception many engineers have before getting to the highest-levels, but it couldn't be further from the truth: When you write better code, you will actually move faster as a software engineer. Don't believe us? - Take the course and find out why!
Alex Chiou is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. Across his entire storied career, he has been a champion of code quality and woven it into so many of his accomplishments:
Course Hero
At Course Hero, Alex was hired as their first Android engineer and tech lead. From there, he grew the team from 1 to 4 engineers and led the Course Hero Android app to having the highest NPS by far of any Course Hero surface (web, iOS, and Android) with the most 5 star ratings.
Meta
At Meta, Alex was a Top 5% code committer and Top 1% reviewer, always getting Exceeds Expectations or higher on the Engineering Excellence performance review axis every half:
- With 270+ diffs landed per half, Alex landed more than double the average Meta engineer. This is largely because his code quality was extremely high, leading to his diffs getting approved and landed on the 1st try 95%+ of the time. Alex was one of very few engineers within his 100+ person org to have an average time-to-close of less than 1 day.
- With 720+ diffs reviewed per half, Alex reviewed more than three times as much code as the average Meta engineer. This is because his expertise in code quality let him spot messy code patterns extremely quickly, uplifting his entire team (and multiple sister teams) to ship much better code.
Side Projects
Outside of work, Alex has built several side projects at scale and with a stunning degree of quality:
- Random Name Picker: 1,000,000+ users with a 4.7 star out of 5 average rating after 5,600+ reviews
- Random Number Generator Plus: 680,000+ users with a 4.8 star out of 5 average rating after 6,500+ reviews
- SQL Practice PRO - Learn DBs: 550,000+ users with a 4.9 star out of 5 average rating after 9,300+ reviews
pretty good, a lot of common sense knowledge and a few hidden gems
This is Incredible!!
This has honestly been one of the most helpful courses on code quality I've taken (including most articles/blogs/videos I've watched on this topic). Most people will go into what design patterns, SOLID/DRY principles or software architecture you need to use and although that is useful, it's only useful for the specific language/framework/codebase it applies to.
What Alex taught me on the other hand, will be useful beyond a single codebase and will last me my entire career. I learned how to write code that fits for the team/culture I'm in and how to write PRs which are much easier for others in my team to review and that's what's much more important long term. This is what earns the trust of the team.
This course was instrumental in improving my code quality. As a software engineer at Rubrik, I have applied the advice over the last few months and received positive feedback!
One phrase that especially sticks out to me is “Do the right things. Do the hard things”. Alex does a great job in driving home this mindset and it will stick with me for the rest of my career.
This course teaches actionable content that helps one become a better engineer. I say that because I have been applying what I learned from it and I feel good about my code quality. For example, I am more productive in my side project when I decompose tasks and write better pull requests and ticket descriptions.
I hope to carry on this, thank you, Alex.
This course on code quality has been incredibly valuable to me as a student about to start college. Learning to make good pull requests by keeping them atomic and focused—under 250 lines—will greatly improve my coding and collaboration skills. Although I might not use everything directly in class, I plan to apply these principles to my side projects, helping me develop cleaner, more maintainable code. The practical advice and emphasis on balancing readability with functionality will be beneficial as I work on building my skills and portfolio.
This course is full of practical and actionable advice that you can incorporate into your code immediately. It's one of the rare courses where I find myself going back to my notes and referencing the strategies I learned about to incorporate into my daily work. It covers everything from how to spot and improve messy code patterns to how to improve your PRs.
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This code quality course has been amazing! It's really helped shift my mindset to craft better PR's and honestly helped on the code review side too. Overall, it's been a big positive for myself and others around me.
If I had this course when I started my career, I would be a lot further along.
As a senior engineer at Robinhood, this course still offered me tips that made me a better coder.
I've been applying the learnings from the course in the code I feel like my code is a lot better. The course has a mix of easy action items to immediately improve your code quality as well as mental model to tackle larger software projects and I have not found such awesome insights anywhere else!
Alex also has a great sense of humor which makes this course super fun, engaging, and binge-able and is not a chore like you typically think when you hear "course".
I wish I had this course during my internship at Goldman Sachs. I now realize how much better my code could have been, and also how I could have better understood the entire codebase. There were so many 'aha moments' throughout the course. This course should be essential viewing for every engineer.
I was lucky enough to be mentored by a star engineer who produces high quality code that nobody else can, and this course covers the majority of the patterns I learned from them.
I highly recommend this course to all SWEs who want to deliver impact through code. It will help you win easily in the long run.
I used this course to reduce the review time on my pull requests by 70%. It's easy to follow this course and there's enough action items to really internalize the knowledge.
I always had questions what exactly was clean code and how I could practice it. I am happy to say this course answered all of my questions and more. Best part is the course is explained in a straightforward and easy to understand way.
Honestly one of the best resources I could find about what code quality means.
I love the point that higher code quality lets you move faster (not slower), and I’m seeing that firsthand in my internship.
Helpful and informative.
Great course, lots of actionable advice that you implement right away. Loved the case studies and examples used to illustrate the lessons. Would highly recommend to all Engineers regardless of level.
