Enums in programming is a safe-fail in constants you intend to use all through your app. They help prevent mistakes in string spellings, and number declarations and save you the stress of constantly repeating some constant variables. Lots of programming languages support enum declaration out of the box and some don’t support it. But whether your language supports the out-of-the-box declaration of enums or not, it is always a good practice to use enums when you find yourself working with sensitive data, especially strings and booleans.

In projects, especially ones with a large codebase where there are different teams of software engineers managing different parts of the applications, it is not uncommon to have certain constant variables that are used all through the project.

Let us take a project that processes transactions as an example, you will have constant keywords like pending, sent, and failed. These constant keywords will be used throughout the application both on the front end and on the backend and bugs will arise if they appear in different cases all through the app. This is where enums come in and remain.

The messages from your bank apps are probably short and precise. Now, imagine you made a transaction and you get a notification that reads ‘Transaction successful’ (take note of the letters) how would you feel? Like your bank doesn’t know what it is doing right? Who then is to blame? The software developer who developed the app or the people who authorized the app for production? The blame game can be avoided if the developer who developed the app used an enum for keywords instead of hard-coding it into the code anytime it is needed.

Enums don’t just prevent spelling mistakes in a codebase it also makes the code readable and well-structured. It also makes the developer follow the DRY principle which is Don’t Repeat Yourself. This principle helps to keep your code less bulky and readable.

In the subsequent posts, I will be teaching you how to make use of enums in your Laravel and Go programming language codebase.