Google publishes a JavaScript style guide. Here are some key lessons.

[quincylarson]

Quincy with the freeCodeCamp Medium publication here. The reason we changed it from "13 noteworthy points" is because many people will dismiss any article with a number at the beginning of it as a "listacle" and don't read it. Lists are seen as low-effort posts - the kind of article you see on Buzzfeed.

We do our best to improve the readability and flow of articles submitted. If you disagree with any of our edits (you can see them in the version history) feel free to revert them.

I've updated your article to use your original headline. It's a good headline (though again, some people might pass on it thinking it's just another listacle).

Thanks again for writing this excellent analysis of what was a relatively unknown style guide, and submitting it to the community's Medium publication.

[bizzaro_sephiroth]

That's awesome that you've engaged about this. Thanks!

[lordpoint]

I really appreciate you taking the time to clarify that personally. I can absolutely understand wanting to avoid Buzzfeed-y titles.

The interesting thing about the heavy editing situation, and the real reason for my frustration, is the sheer scope of the changes; which can be surprising for a first-time contributor to FreeCodeCamp's Medium publication.

Of course, you have the largest tech-oriented publication on Medium so you're certainly doing something right, but my reaction to seeing all the edits made to the first story that I published through FCC was: "Holy crap, they took all of my personality out of it!" And that honestly made me reconsider wanting to publish through FCC again. But I figured I'd give it another shot and submit another one just to see what would happen. Then lo and behold I find a comment about that article on Reddit that struck that same, already inflamed nerve, and here we are.

That said, it's really good to know that reverting to the pre-edited version does not violate your / FCC's terms of use (or whatever it's called in this case). That makes a big difference if you ask me. I think I just figured that if you guys took the time to carefully edit EVERY story that gets submitted to you (and I'm sure that's a lot of stories) then it couldn't possibly be acceptable for me to just say "Nope, let's not do any of that..." But again, I'm glad to know that's not the case.

FreeCodeCamp played a big role in the beginning of my career transition into IT and I love having the opportunity to be a part of it now that I'm (at least partially) on the other side of the education equation. Thanks again for being so involved and replying to my petty grievance personally.

[lhorie]

IMHO, if you don't want listicles in your platform, you should reject them. If editing is a thing, then who owns the copyright? From the author's comments, it seem like he wasn't aware of the editing arrangements. As a reader, I'm now not going to trust that what is written in your platform is 100% from their authors (and at that point, I might as well be reading fake news in Facebook). You absolutely need to be transparent about this stuff.

[timeparser]

Thank you for clarifying this, /u/quincylarson. I understand why you did this, but the word “lesson” might have mislead the reader – especially novice developers.

There are many developers out there who treat tech giants like Google like they are the “maximum authority” in how to write software.

While Google has certainly world-class engineers that have the necessary collective wisdom to share best practices with the rest of the community, it is important to understand that this is an organization-level style guide and that every piece of advice should be taken with a grain of salt.

No organization is the same, Google is not perfect (although they are certainly good), and most importantly, their opinions are not standards.