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Software Engineering vocabulary · Code Review and Code Quality

Linter

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈlɪntər/nounCommon term

In software engineering, linter means: A tool that scans code without running it and warns about style problems, suspicious patterns and simple mistakes, such as unused variables.

In Turkish: kod denetleyici, statik kod analiz aracı

How it is used

Teams run linters such as ESLint or Pylint locally and in CI. People say 'The linter complains about this', 'fix the lint errors' and 'run lint'. A good linter setup removes many nitpicks from reviews.

Example sentences

  1. The linter is failing because of an unused import in your PR.

  2. We added a linter rule that bans console.log in production code.

Common collocations

  • run the linter
  • linter rule
  • lint errors
  • the linter complains
  • code reviewThe practice of teammates reading and commenting on each other's code changes before they are merged, to catch problems and share knowledge.
  • nitpickA very small, optional comment in a review about details like naming, spacing or wording, which should not block the change. Often shortened to 'nit'.
  • CI/CDShort for continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment): automatically building and testing every change, then releasing it quickly and safely.
  • IDEShort for integrated development environment: an application for writing code that brings together an editor, a debugger, search and other tools in one place.
  • code smellA sign in code that suggests a deeper design problem, such as a very long function, duplicated logic or too many parameters, even if the code works.

More terms: Code Review and Code Quality

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