How to Keep Your Code From Destroying You

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has a few quick tips on how to write maintainable code that won't leech your most valuable resource — time. These six tips on how to write maintainable code are guaranteed to save you time and frustration: one minute spent writing comments can save you an hour of anguish. Bad code gets written all the time. But it doesn't have to be that way. Its time to ask yourself if its time for you to convert to the clean code religion."

Comments

That was just terrible...

[FortKnox]

That has to be the worst written article on cleaning up your code I've ever read.
This looks like it was written for (and BY) freshmen CS majors.

Comment your code smartly? No shit?
Use #defines everywhere? Honestly, I find that having a config file (or DB table) is a lot better, as I can change global variables without even a recompile...

I'm not saying its BAD advice, its just advice that anyone in the real world already knows.
How about something new?
1.) Use test driven development
2.) Write complete unit tests, including bad input
3.) If any piece of code is complex enough to require a comment, make it its own function and comment the function. I believe the only thing that REQUIRES comments are classes and methods. Not pieces of code...

I code go on, but I'm not a writer...
And neither is the author of that pile of trash...

Re:That was just terrible...

[AuMatar]

Not every program uses a db. In fact the majority of programs don't. And unless a constant is going to change frequently, or needs to be configured per client, putting it in a configuration file or db table is a bad idea. It makes it fairly likely it will be changed by accident. The only things that should be in configuration files are things you actually expect the user to configure per install.

As for your advice

1)Thinking about testing early- good. Writing unit tests-good. The test driven development mentality (write tests instead of design, write unit tests before coding)- bad. It leads to a lot of wasted time, completely rewritten test suites, and throw away work. Thinking about testing early is useful, it may cause you to think about corner cases. But writing them first causes 2 problems- you end up writing the code to solve the tests (rather than solving the problem) and/or you end up throwing away half the test suite in the middle when you refactor the design.

3)Disagree. The purpose of comments is to make sure that maintainers know what the code is trying to do. Anything block of code thats more than 5 or 6 lines deserves a comment. Breaking all of those into independent functions leaves you with hundreds of 5 or 6 line functions, which is even harder to understand how they interact. Frequently the correct thing to do is not break it into a function and just write a 1 line comment.

Mostly agreed

[ZorbaTHut]

I thought I'd make two comments on things that I think he got a bit wrong.

Tip 2: Don't use #define. Avoid it as best as you can. Use const int. That's what it's for. It will be typechecked by the compiler, it's much harder to produce bizarre errors, and 99% of the time it's better.

const int NUM_ALIENS_TO_KILL_TO_END_WAVE = 20;

Tip 4: Warning messages don't work. Don't bother with them. Use assert() - if it triggers, your program will crash with a useful error message. Now that's an incentive to make things work!

In my current project, out of 25,000 lines of code, I have almost 1100 asserts. And the first number counts whitespace. Any bugs I have get found and squashed pretty much instantly.

It was fine...

[Erasmus]

People who are just starting their careers as programmers are allowed to read articles too. Just because something is aimed at a population less experienced than you doesn't mean that it's crap!

I'm not sure if it really called for a Slashdot entry, but I've been on a few projects with new coders where a quick read of something like this on their parts would have saved everyone a lot of grief.

Felt I should point out

[loqi]

... if your C code requires you to know the difference between i++ and ++i, it is too complicated

It's not a matter of knowing the difference, it's a matter of the code depending on the difference. If you need to increment beforehand, do it on the previous line. Afterward, do it on the next line. Expressions are like sex: they're better without side-effects.