Preprogrammed Success: lasting Software Development with Clean Code

The development of a holistic standardized software solution for life insurance companies is a complex and demanding task that requires thorough planning as well as clear architecture. A life insurance portfolio management system is a strategic investment for the insurance company that is in operation for a long time - in other words, for more than 20 years. Over the lifetime of such a system, 80-90% of its total expenditure typically goes into maintenance and expansion. To ensure a high quality standard during development, in|sure PSLife has placed a great deal of emphasis on clean and sustainable code for over a decade, both in product development and in on-site customization for customers.

Clean code is an approach that strives for readability, maintainability and efficiency. This blog post explains what clean code is and how it is applied in developing in|sure PSLife.

What is clean code?

In the book "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" by Robert C. Martin, clean code is taught as a programming style that is easy to understand and apply. Among the benefits of clean code is that it reduces complexity and improves collaboration between developers. As a result, the focus when using clean code is on efficiently maintaining software.

Basic principles of clean code

The basic principles of clean code are:

• Meaningful names: Variables, functions, and categories should be named so that their function and meaning are clear. Instead of abbreviations, one should choose meaningful designations.
• Small functions: Functions should be short and concise, ideally containing no more than a few lines of code. Long functions result in complex code and make it difficult to read.
• Clear and consistent structuring: Uniform indentation and formatting improves code readability and maintainability. Most notably, collaboration between developers is significantly simplified.
• No redundancy: Duplicate code fragments in the source code are reduced. It is good practice to always look for opportunities to reuse source code in order to avoid unnecessarily complex coding. Redundancies increase the risk of errors and make it difficult to adapt the code.
• Testability: Writing code that can be easily tested is a critical step in improving software quality and reliability. Automated testing allows for potential errors and vulnerabilities to be identified early, before the software goes into production.

Clean code's added value

There are a number of benefits to using clean code in software development:

• Higher quality: Cleaner code is also usually of higher quality. By focusing on readability and testability, many errors are avoided before they even occur. The quality of the software increases, which has a positive effect on customer satisfaction.
• Maintainability: Because it is easier to understand, clean code is also easier to maintain. New developers can learn the code faster and make changes without accidentally introducing new bugs. The time it takes to troubleshoot is reduced in particular.
• Reduced costs: Software maintenance is expensive. With clean code, errors can be found and fixed faster, resulting in lower costs in the long run. Code that can be easily extended and customized saves time and resources.

The practical application of clean code

Here are some examples of how clean code is applied in insurance software development:

• Code reviews: Regular and critical code reviews are an integral part of the development process. This is to ensure clean code principles for maintaining high code quality. In addition, developers are encouraged to exchange knowledge.
• Automated tests: Clean code also includes automated tests with which the functional correctness of the code can be ensured. Test-driven development (TDD) has proven to be a convincing and effective method.
• Refactoring: Refactoring is a constant process that is designed for optimizing the code. This does not change the functionality. Refactoring's goal is to increase the code's readability, maintainability, and efficiency.

Overcoming complex challenges

Applying clean code in in|sure PSLife's development is critical to overcoming complex challenges and creating a high-quality, maintainable software solution. Clean code improves collaboration, reduces maintenance costs and enables efficient scalability. This is the result of developers understanding the principles of clean code and applying them in their daily work. The software development is raised to a new level and successful projects are preprogrammed.

Would you like to learn more about our in|sure PSLIfe software? Then get in touch with our expert, Oliver Shippa, Senior Business Developer at adesso insurance solutions.