Programming Proverbs

Programming Proverbs 26: Don't be afraid to start over

Noticias externas — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:50:42 GMT

The statement "Don't be afraid to start over" seems obvious to the breed of programmer

Programming Proverbs 25 Consider another language

Noticias externas — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:31:44 GMT

What's that old line about if all you have is a hammer all your problems look like nails? There are

Programming Proverbs 24: Re-read the manual

Noticias externas — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 10:32:09 GMT

I've been telling students and others that " reading the manual is the shortcut " for years

Programming Proverbs 23: When the program is correct, produce good output

Noticias externas — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:20:52 GMT

This proverb is a corollary to the last post in this series . While getting the program correct and the

Programming Proverbs 22: Get the program correct before trying to provide good output

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:12:39 GMT

In some ways I think this is one of those proverbs that was more important back in the days when batch

Programming Proverbs 16: Build in debugging techniques

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson — Sun, 13 May 2007 05:44:29 GMT

When ever programming teachers get together one of the debates that often starts up is between using

re: Programming Proverbs

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:37:19 GMT

Interesting comment about IntelliSense encouraging a bottom-up approach. I think that is true if you start with programming and not with design. What I mean by that is that some people create their design in code rather than working out the full design before starting to code. I think that if you create a design using a top down approach it takes longer to get to the building blocks. that is frustrating to many, especially students, but in the long run results in a much better design.

With a complete design in place one does know what the little blocks of code will be at least from the standpoint of names and interfaces. Creating those little blocks early on in the programming is fine as long as the design is complete.

re: Programming Proverbs

Eric Pepke — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:45:28 GMT

Number 3: It's interesting to note that IntelliSense encourages a bottom-up approach. See http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html

Number 21: This was all the rage when programs took 10 minutes to compile. It's still a good idea for discipline but probably far less important.

Number 13: Any compiler worth its salt is going to optimize these out.

Numbers 25 and 26: Impractical in most cases.

The most interesting thing about what has happened in CS over the past quarter century is that Fred Brooks' 1-3-9 rule is now completely inverted. He said that it costs nine times as much to make a general, interoperable system than an ad hoc one. Now, it is far more costly to make an ad hoc system than a general, interoperable one. This is mostly due to standards, such as XML, HTML, Soap, Unicode, the DOM (especially in .Net 2.0), XSLT, XPath, etc.

re: Programming Proverbs

Ben Fulton — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:48:52 GMT

Write automated tests.

re: Programming Proverbs

Anthony Tarlano — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:12:25 GMT

1. Explicit is better then implicit

2. Practicality beats purity

3. Readability counts

4. When in doubt, use brute force

5. Simplicity, Clarity, Generality form the bedrock of good software