by Christopher Diggins
July 24, 2011 Summary
Over the years I have found that following a relatively small number of fundamental guiding principles has helped me become a much more effective programmer. Today's post is a lightly edited repost from my blog at The Area, a web-site dedicated to users of Autodesk media and entertainment products. I came up with this list of principles to help with a recent C# training I gave, and I thought that members of the Artima.com community could appreciate these principles and have some interesting insights to share.
Principles of Good ProgrammingThe principles of good programming are closely related to principles of good design and engineering. The following programming principles have helped me over the years become a better programmer, and I believe can help any developer become more efficient and to produce code which is easier to maintain and that has fewer defects. DRY - Don’t repeat yourself - This is probably the single most fundamental tenet in programming is to avoid repetition. Many programming constructs exist solely for that purpose (e.g. loops, functions, classes, and more). As soon as you start repeating yourself (e.g. a long expression, a series of statements, same concept) create a new abstraction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself Abstraction Principle - Related to DRY is the abstraction principle “Each significant piece of functionality in a program should be implemented in just one place in the source code.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_principle_(programming) KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) - Simplicity (and avoiding complexity) should always be a key goal. Simple code takes less time to write, has fewer bugs, and is easier to modify. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle Avoid Creating a YAGNI (You aren’t going to need it) - You should try not to add functionality until you need it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAGNIDo the simplest thing that could possibly work - A good question to ask one’s self when programming is “What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?” This helps keep us on the path towards simplicity in the design. http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html Don’t make me think - This is actually the title of a book by Steve Krug on web usability that is also relevant in programming. The point is that code should be easily read and understood with a minimum of effort required. If code requires too much thinking from an observer to understand, then it can probably stand to be simplified http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html Open/Closed Principle - Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification. In other words, don't write classes that people can modify, write classes that people can extend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Closed_Principle (more..)Read more: Artima developerQR:
July 24, 2011 Summary
Over the years I have found that following a relatively small number of fundamental guiding principles has helped me become a much more effective programmer. Today's post is a lightly edited repost from my blog at The Area, a web-site dedicated to users of Autodesk media and entertainment products. I came up with this list of principles to help with a recent C# training I gave, and I thought that members of the Artima.com community could appreciate these principles and have some interesting insights to share.
Principles of Good ProgrammingThe principles of good programming are closely related to principles of good design and engineering. The following programming principles have helped me over the years become a better programmer, and I believe can help any developer become more efficient and to produce code which is easier to maintain and that has fewer defects. DRY - Don’t repeat yourself - This is probably the single most fundamental tenet in programming is to avoid repetition. Many programming constructs exist solely for that purpose (e.g. loops, functions, classes, and more). As soon as you start repeating yourself (e.g. a long expression, a series of statements, same concept) create a new abstraction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself Abstraction Principle - Related to DRY is the abstraction principle “Each significant piece of functionality in a program should be implemented in just one place in the source code.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_principle_(programming) KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) - Simplicity (and avoiding complexity) should always be a key goal. Simple code takes less time to write, has fewer bugs, and is easier to modify. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle Avoid Creating a YAGNI (You aren’t going to need it) - You should try not to add functionality until you need it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAGNIDo the simplest thing that could possibly work - A good question to ask one’s self when programming is “What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?” This helps keep us on the path towards simplicity in the design. http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html Don’t make me think - This is actually the title of a book by Steve Krug on web usability that is also relevant in programming. The point is that code should be easily read and understood with a minimum of effort required. If code requires too much thinking from an observer to understand, then it can probably stand to be simplified http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html Open/Closed Principle - Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification. In other words, don't write classes that people can modify, write classes that people can extend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Closed_Principle (more..)Read more: Artima developerQR:
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