Throughout my career I have always been drawn to books which provide a practical way of thinking about software. Books of this nature tend to have an emphasis on fundamental principles which apply to all software engineering disciplines, and form much of the basis of the Agile methodologies many of us have come to appreciate. <\/p>\n
Often, I find myself going back to the seminal text; The Pragmatic Programmer<\/a> as, it provides a great resource for some important things I like to keep in mind from day to day. And so, I just wanted to take a moment to share some of the best tips from the book which I have found to be particularly useful and inspiring. <\/p>\n Why spend your life developing software unless you care about doing it well?<\/p>\n Instead of excuses, provide options. Don’t say it can’t be done; explain what can be done.<\/p>\n Don’t be swayed by vendors, media hype, or dogma. Analyze information in terms of you and your project.<\/p>\n Use contracts to document and verify that code does no more and no less than it claims to do.<\/p>\n Just as you might weed and rearrange a garden, rewrite, rework, and re-architect code when it needs it. Fix the root of the problem.<\/p>\n Beware of vendor hype, industry dogma, and the aura of the price tag. Judge tools on their merits.<\/p>\n You’ve been building experience all your life. Don’t ignore niggling doubts.<\/p>\n Don’t blindly adopt any technique without putting it into the context of your development practices and capabilities.<\/p>\n There’s no point in having great ideas if you don’t communicate them effectively.<\/p>\n Software can’t be perfect. Protect your code and users from the inevitable errors.<\/p>\n Documentation created separately from code is less likely to be correct and up to date.<\/p>\n Program for the general case, and put the specifics outside the compiled code base.<\/p>\n It’s the best way to gain insight into how the system will really be used.<\/p>\n Design and code in your user’s language.<\/p>\n Create and maintain a single source of all the specific terms and vocabulary for a project.<\/p>\n You can’t force change on people. Instead, show them how the future might be and help them participate in creating it.<\/p>\n Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.<\/p>\n Design components that are self-contained, independent, and have a single, well-defined purpose.<\/p>\n Use experience you gain as you implement to refine the project time scales.<\/p>\n Use the shell when graphical user interfaces don’t cut it.<\/p>\n Take a deep breath and THINK! about what could be causing the bug.<\/p>\n Prove your assumptions in the actual environment—with real data and boundary conditions.<\/p>\n Code generators increase your productivity and help avoid duplication.<\/p>\n Test ruthlessly. Don’t make your users find bugs for you.<\/p>\n Requirements rarely lie on the surface. They’re buried deep beneath layers of assumptions, misconceptions, and politics.<\/p>\n Invest in the abstraction, not the implementation. Abstractions can survive the barrage of changes from different implementations and new technologies.<\/p>\n When faced with an impossible problem, identify the real constraints. Ask yourself: “Does it have to be done this way? Does it have to be done at all?”;<\/p>\n Don’t fall into the specification spiral—at some point you need to start coding.<\/p>\n A shell script or batch file will execute the same instructions, in the same order, time after time.<\/p>\n Identify and test significant program states. Just testing lines of code isn’t enough.<\/p>\n Come to understand your users’ expectations, then deliver just that little bit more.<\/p>\n Fix bad designs, wrong decisions, and poor code when you see them.<\/p>\n Don’t get so engrossed in the details that you forget to check what’s happening around you.<\/p>\n If it’s easy to reuse, people will. Create an environment that supports reuse.<\/p>\n No decision is cast in stone. Instead, consider each as being written in the sand at the beach, and plan for change.<\/p>\n Estimate before you start. You’ll spot potential problems up front.<\/p>\n The editor should be an extension of your hand; make sure your editor is configurable, extensible, and programmable.<\/p>\n It doesn’t really matter whether the bug is your fault or someone else’s—it is still your problem, and it still needs to be fixed.<\/p>\n It is rare to find a bug in the OS or the compiler, or even a third-party product or library. The bug is most likely in the application.<\/p>\n You spend a large part of each day working with text. Why not have the computer do some of it for you?<\/p>\n Exceptions can suffer from all the readability and maintainability problems of classic spaghetti code. Reserve exceptions for exceptional things.<\/p>\n Avoid coupling by writing “shy” code and applying the Law of Demeter.<\/p>\n Design in terms of services: independent, concurrent objects behind well-defined, consistent interfaces.<\/p>\n Rely only on reliable things. Beware of accidental complexity, and don’t confuse a happy coincidence with a purposeful plan.<\/p>\n Don’t separate designers from coders, testers from data modelers. Build teams the way you build code.<\/p>\n Tests that run with every build are much more effective than test plans that sit on a shelf.<\/p>\n Once a human tester finds a bug, it should be the last time a human tester finds that bug. Automatic tests should check for it from then on.<\/p>\n Craftsmen of an earlier age were proud to sign their work. You should be, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is my hope that you will find some of these tips helpful and, if so, I suggest keeping those which resonate with you (as well as some of your own) someplace visible for reference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Throughout my career I have always been drawn to books which provide a practical way of thinking about software. Books of this nature tend to have an emphasis on fundamental principles which apply to all software engineering disciplines, and form much of the basis of the Agile methodologies many of us have come to appreciate. Often, I find myself going… Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[41,44,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agile-development","category-code-review","category-oop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericfeminella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Care About Your Craft<\/h4>\n
Provide Options, Don’t Make Lame Excuses<\/h4>\n
Critically Analyze What You Read and Hear<\/h4>\n
Design with Contracts<\/h4>\n
Refactor Early, Refactor Often<\/h4>\n
Costly Tools Don’t Produce Better Designs<\/h4>\n
Start When You’re Ready<\/h4>\n
Don’t Be a Slave to Formal Methods<\/h4>\n
It’s Both What You Say and the Way You Say It<\/h4>\n
You Can’t Write Perfect Software<\/h4>\n
Build Documentation In, Don’t Bolt It On<\/h4>\n
Put Abstractions in Code, Details in Metadata<\/h4>\n
Work with a User to Think Like a User<\/h4>\n
Program Close to the Problem Domain<\/h4>\n
Use a Project Glossary<\/h4>\n
Be a Catalyst for Change<\/h4>\n
DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself<\/h4>\n
Eliminate Effects Between Unrelated Things<\/h4>\n
Iterate the Schedule with the Code<\/h4>\n
Use the Power of Command Shells<\/h4>\n
Don’t Panic When Debugging<\/h4>\n
Don’t Assume It – Prove It<\/h4>\n
Write Code That Writes Code<\/h4>\n
Test Your Software, or Your Users Will<\/h4>\n
Don’t Gather Requirements—Dig for Them<\/h4>\n
Abstractions Live Longer than Details<\/h4>\n
Don’t Think Outside the Box—Find the Box<\/h4>\n
Some Things Are Better Done than Described<\/h4>\n
Don’t Use Manual Procedures<\/h4>\n
Test State Coverage, Not Code Coverage<\/h4>\n
Gently Exceed Your Users’ Expectations<\/h4>\n
Don’t Live with Broken Windows<\/h4>\n
Remember the Big Picture<\/h4>\n
Make It Easy to Reuse<\/h4>\n
There Are No Final Decisions<\/h4>\n
Estimate to Avoid Surprises<\/h4>\n
Use a Single Editor Well<\/h4>\n
Fix the Problem, Not the Blame<\/h4>\n
“select” Isn’t Broken<\/h4>\n
Learn a Text Manipulation Language<\/h4>\n
Use Exceptions for Exceptional Problems<\/h4>\n
Minimize Coupling Between Modules<\/h4>\n
Design Using Services<\/h4>\n
Don’t Program by Coincidence<\/h4>\n
Organize Teams Around Functionality<\/h4>\n
Test Early. Test Often. Test Automatically.<\/h4>\n
Find Bugs Once<\/h4>\n
Sign Your Work<\/h4>\n