Slashdot Mirror
What To Do Right As a New Programmer?
globeadue writes "My company just tagged me for full time App Dev — I've essentially never coded for money, but the last 3 years of support desk gives me the business sense to know the environment I'll be coding for. Now my company will be training me, so I think the technical side of things will be covered, what I'm looking for is best practices, habits I should/shouldn't develop, etc as I take on my new craft."
Well, I think you'll probably pick up those best practices as part of your "training".
Every shop does things differently.. from simple stuff like naming conventions right up to core design methodologies and team management.
My advice would be to just spend as much time as possible listening and observing. Read through existing code.. pay close attention in meetings to how the brainstorming and final solution tends to evolve.
Some companies take a "we are paying you for your intellegence.. part of your job is to argue your design and beliefs" attitude whilst others take more of a "we are paying you.. so shut up and do it the way we want" approach.
As a side note.. check out the book "Beautiful Code"... It's good mind food. "Pragmatic Progammer" is also good.
Probably the most important thing you can keep in mind when writing new code is to think about the poor sap who has to maintain that code somewhere down the line. Especially because in a lot of cases, that poor sap will be you. Pretty much everything else follows naturally from there.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Hey, I like the ? : construct. You leave it alone!!!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Don't stick to just one language (the one they expect you to use). Learn how to do some basic things in several languages. This will help you understand "programming" rather than just knowing a language. Many of the same semantics apply in many languages with only the exact syntax changing. Learn the concepts not the implementations. This doesn't mean that you should try to code in many languages for your job, but as you are presented with problems do a general "how to do x" web search before you do a "how to do x using y language". The best coders I know see a particular language as a tool rather than a mandate. If you only stick to one language, you are imposing an artificial limit to your thought process and ability to problem solve.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
- Listen to your end users. They're the reason you're writing the software. Even when they ask for something stupid, be sure to listen to their needs.
- Listen to other smart developers. Find the smartest experienced guy in your new team, or other similar teams, and pick up tips and feedback. There is a LOT that can easily be learned from other smart people's experiences. Ask questions, but don't be annoying. Following a few bloggers in your field can be helpful if you find the right ones, but an experienced person on your own team would be best.
- Read up on general best practices. Indent your code consistently, write comments, name variables and functions well, etc.
- Think about your code long term. Code is rarely used just once and never looked at again. Write it so it should last and be relatively easy for you to pick up a year later or for someone else to take over.
- Don't box yourself into one line of thinking. If you become religiously attached to one particular language, for example, you'll eventually stagnate. Learn the best traits of a variety of languages and systems. It'll make you a better all-around programmer.
Developers: We can use your help.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
?: ternary is fantastic for short clauses, such as $foo = isset($_GET['id']) ? sanitize($_GET['id']) : 0;.
The logical sequence for this is a and b or c, or isset($_GET['id']) && sanitize($_GET['id']) || 0;, but ignore the PHP 'cause PHP won't handle it this way (it'll put a boolean in $foo).
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
1) Your employer will never give you sufficient time to finish what you need to do. Bend over and take it. It comes with the job
2) Never blame someone else directly, even if it is obviously someone else's fault
3) Don't expect overtime pay. You'll never get it. If you ask for it, things will conveniently become a "this isn't working out" situation 4) The salesmen will sell things that you probably can't provide without working 24/7 for the next 6 months. They will also likely make 4x what you make, plus commission. Bend over and take it. 5) Do NOT EVER NEVER EVER bring in personal code to work... even if it suits the situation/project. Not only will you be expected to then provide some more goodies in your off-time, you pretty much lose the right to it of any legal ambiguity occurs. 6) Get every promise in writing. Whether it a bonus, "comp time" for late/extra hours worked, whatever.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
There are a few advantages to starting with maintenance work:
1) The majority of the work is probably done for you.
2) You'll have a chance to force yourself to get used to working with someone else's code.
3) If you have good senior software engineers working with you, you'll have people who can show you how things ought to be done/have to be done.
I've been out of college for nearly three years, and most of my experience has been cleaning up the mess that others have made. Usually the projects have been ones written by cheap consultants who got the contract by bleeding themselves dry on their bidding. You'd be amazed at how obviously bad a lot of the work that these do, even though you're just getting out of college.
This is one of the times when the saying "there is more than one way to skin a cat" comes to mind.
I work in a shop that has a solid rule of not commenting anything. It carries another hard rule along with it. We write very explicit method, field, parameter, and test names. If the code is in someway not understandable for you than stop and rewrite it so that it is clear.
Comments are a nice concept, but in practice they are rarely kept current. And amazingly enough are rarely correct immediately after they are written.
Sometimes there might be a better way to do things.
Try to right program code comments as much as possible as long as memory permits it (if you do have a memory cap).
It makes your job down the road a lot easier, as well as other people's job easier, too.
Try to have it make sense, too. Overall, doing this helps you in retaining how the code works step by step so that you will almost know it like the back of your hand.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
So far I like mr_mischief's reply best. Aside from that, here's what keeps me on track:
But much more importantly, get enough sleep. I'm at least x2 more productive when I have 8.5 hours of sleep than when I have <7 hours of sleep. That's 1.5 hours that makes the difference of +4 hours of useful work. It's worth it, if you care about your work at all.
- shazow
Lies. Exceptions are not meant for intentional flow control, they are for exceptions. Exceptions are (in almost all implementations) much slower and you would never want to use them in place of a goto in, say, a core loop where the goto case happens a significant portion of the time.
Same could go for software development.
Couldn't stand the weather
Judicious use can make code clearer. As Mum always says, everything in moderation. (That is where the emphasis is, right?)
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
1) go buy code complete. read it a chapter a week. when you are done, reread it. if your understanding of the book has not changed completely, you need to go find a new career.
2) learn discipline now. code complete has some excellent examples (e.g. declaring variables only as you need them and initialize them immediately, put constants on the left hand sides of logical tests, etc.) and your coding standards should provide other guidance.
3) take dijkstra's words to heart: "The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague." corollary: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." (kernigan)
4) get in the habit of maintaining engineering notebooks. over time you'll figure out how to keep useful notes and those notebooks will be worth their weight (or more!) in gold.
5) go find a senior dev that you have a solid personal relationship with and see if you can establish an informal mentor/mentee relationship.
6) ask questions. lots of them. keep on asking until you're satisfied with the answer.
7) understand that any task that requires more than 2 minutes worth of programming merits at least 10 minutes worth of putting a plan together / drawing pictures / planning and at least 30 minutes worth of testing (ideally by adding to an existing automated test suite, hint hint...)
[snip]...Please please please, leave comments so others can figure out what the fuck your logic was...[snip]
Just elaborating on that - write comments that explain _why_ you're doing something not _how_ you did it.
It's much more useful to see why someone did a bit of code in a particular way than it is to have an explanation of what the next 10 lines mean. Programmers can work the latter out if they need to.
Unfortunately, test-driven design is not a silver bullet, unless you're lucky enough to have a finite problem space where you can achieve 100% test coverage, which almost no-one does, and you can consistently write perfect test code, which would be surprising if you're worried enough about your normal code to write all those tests in the first place.
In the absence of such unrealistic guarantees, TDD lies somewhere between a useful addition to your coding practices and snake oil, depending on the realism and honesty of the person advocating/implementing it. Either case, it is not a substitute for good documentation and commenting.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I strongly agree. Self-describing code is much better than comments. Comments are only useful, IMHO, when you need to describe a complex situation. If it can be expressed in one sentence or less, it should probably be part of the code itself. I.e., instead of:
std::string mkdec(std::string x) // Converts x, a string representing a hexidecimal number, to a decimal string.
std::string convert_hex_string_to_decimal_string(std::string hex_string)
The latter says the exact same thing, but is far likelier to be maintained properly. Also, if you get in the habit of coding like that, you never have to worry about forgetting to comment. Furthermore, the "comment" is effectively replicated every time the function is used. Hence,
instead of:
hex = "0x" + number_str;
return mkdec(hex);
you see:
hex = "0x" + number_str;
return convert_hex_string_to_decimal_string(hex);
Now, if you had a function that implements a complex algorithm that can't be summed up in short order, then sure, use a comment. But in my experience, 95% of comments in code are like the above "mkdec" comment, and would be better expressed just by using a more descriptive function or variable name. I think a lot of coders are just lazy and don't want to have to type in longer, more descriptive variable and function names.
You don't exist. Go away.
Actually, I've been told that assembler code ought to be commented in just that way. In well written high-level code, individual lines should have a self-evident purpose, but often this is just not possible in very low-level code. Can you really tell at a glance what "djnz" means? And even if the answer is "yes", can you reasonably expect everyone else to have it memorized?
I don't have enough experience with assembly language to render an opinion myself on whether this is really necessary in a development context, but in school I spent a semester programming ASM and the line-by-line commenting seemed indispensable.
(Or did you mean that the comment was somehow inaccurate? Like I said, who can look at "djnz" and remember what it means? I can't.)
Use a slow machine with little free memory to test your code. It teaches you to be efficient. That is why 1GB of ram is not enough for an office anymore.
Fight Spammers!
No matter what more politically-correct people like to think, all people are not born equal. The best software developers are born with a certain affinity for the mindset required. Education can build on it, but if you don't have it to start with you won't ever be good or as happy working as a software developer as whatever you're really cut out to be.
You need to make an analytical and honest decision with yourself as to whether this is a direction you want to be going in with your life and career. Unless you're absolutely sure you're the right person to be a software developer, then don't do it. The fact that you've apparently already been happy to do tech support rather than write software might itself be an indicator that this is not a good move for you.
OK now you've decided to go ahead anyway, the next stage is that you need to know what you are doing.
Contrary what most other posters here are suggesting, you're jnever going to be fully effective if you just try and learn on the job or learn from other software developers around you. There is a lot more to being a good software developer than being able to write a program that runs OK.
By limiting yourself to learmning on the job, at best you will only develop a tiny subset of very specific skills you need for your particular company/product/langauge/toolchain, and will not get a deeper understanding of some very important concepts. Also that approach will almost certainly start you off with some very bad programming habits (i.e. your colleagues).
Ask your company to allow you as much time as you can get to attend some Cumputer Science and Software Engineering courses at your local college or university.
If you need justification, tell them that your company will save way more than the time/money it costs them in terms of your increased knowledge, usefullness and code quality meaning much less rework required.
If they still say no, then make every effort yourself to at least do some evening courses and build points towards a Computer Science or other similar software related degree.
Assuming you don't want to work for the same company for ever, you need to understand that no matter how good you think you are, these days a Computer Science or other relevant degree is a basic requirement for many if not most software developer positions. You learn a lot of really useful fundamental concepts on a CS degree course that will be highly relevant, used and needed throughout your whole career. Ususally the only people who dont agree with the value of a CS degree for software engineers are those who don't have one, so don't know what they don't know.
If you want to grow up to be a great prolific coder, follow these two rules --
1) do anything that makes you want to write code
2) don't do anything that discourages you from writing code
Coders cease to be coders because they fail to follow these two rules, and many find themselves in marketing or customer support. Some even wind up in sales.
I want to make one point. *any* code is unmanageable if you don't comment
I disagree strongly. I think the important thing is to make your code easy to understand. Comments should be a last resort.
As an analogy, consider your MP3 player. Suppose that every time they struggled with a UI decision, they just decided to put something in a manual or on a sticker on the back. It would be an abomination. The right approach is to make it so that as much as possible, instructions aren't necessary.
When I'm coding, I'll first try to put information in names, like variable and method names. Next I'll try to extract methods or objects, so as to minimize complexity. Then I'll worry about interface and object names. And I put a lot of information in readable unit tests, as that's a kind of documentation that the computer can verify still is valid. Documentation is always a last resort.
I have to deal with a lot of other people's code, and I'll always take beautifully polished code with no docs over mediocre code with lots of docs.
Disagree...
Commenting should be reserved only for especially complex algorithms (describe the algorithm itself) and class level descriptions (what the class or module does). Decipherable code has much more to do with good variable naming, good indentation habits, and consistent well thought out use of flow control structures.
I can't count how many times I've been tripped up by a 'helpful' comment that had been left when code was refactored or changed over time. Dangling comments are a real problem. It's one thing to have to actually read the code (a skill good programmers universally have) and another to have a comment tell you one thing and then have to grok that the code is actually doing something quite different.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Always keep in mind that your job is to reduce and manage complexity - not to increase complexity or let it run wild.
Seek out ways to make your code simple and elegant.
A large part of complexity management is making sure that your code can be read easily, and that it's function is obvious from a quick scan.
Find good code (this may be difficult), and read it. You'll notice things including:
- short functions / methods
- each function / method does one thing, and it's name clearly tells you what it does.
- simplicity and understandibility is favored of 'trickiness'.
- in the words of the "Pragmatic Programmer" folks, the "Don't Repeat Yourself" (DRY) rule is followed.
One more thing - don't fall into the bad habit of "I'll do it this crappy / complex way now, and refactor it / comment it later". In practice, "later" rarely happens.
No, hell no! I program in assembler (on zSeries). DJNZ and such are easy to find in the manual. Whoever reads the code is expected to know the instruction set.
I would recommend to comment on (almost) every line, but the comments have to be meaningful. For example, instead of saying "increment register AX" say "increment file array counter" or "point to next character", depending on what you are working with. It's extremely important for readability to constantly repeat what kind of data you have in registers. Or if you are testing a condition, write what condition means - is it error processing or normal program? Where do you jump? And so on.
Of course, you should also use comment blocks for larger algorithmic structure of the assembler program.
Find the most authoritative reference manual you can find for every tool, every language you come in contact with. The question is not "how do I make it do such-and-so?", the questions are "what is it made to do?" and "what can I make it do?".
Do the onion-skin trick: read -- almost skim -- once, for fast comprehension, don't try to remember everything, just remember the new words and where to find them. Read it again, to remember which parts talk about which other parts. Read it again, to start understanding why those parts talk about those others. Only then should you even start thinking about asking yourself "how do I make this do X?".
Don't trust *anything* in any other book until you can tell what part of the authoritative reference it's talking about. Using C++? Pay the $18 or whatever it is now and read the ISO standard. Every book about C++ you read, tie what it's saying back to a section of the standard, and be sure you understand what both are saying. Using vim? Read the help. All of it. Do it again. Using MS Word? Hit F1 and start reading. Read everything. Using Python? Get the reference manuals and read them. Using TCP/IP? Read the RFCs.
Read The Fucking Manuals. Obsessively. Reread them again a month later. Then again a few months later. The questions are always: What is this made to do? What can I make it do?
Get used to it. I used to tell people I read manuals for a living. Classes are excuses to spend that much time reading the manuals. If you read the manuals, you won't need the classes. There is an *astonishing* amount of crap out there in the help books, useless "simplifications" that obfuscate the point of what they're supposedly explaining.
What worked for me every time I had or could steal the necessary time was, roughly, to overengineer the hell out of it, then boil out all the crap. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's maxim is absolutely dead-on: Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.
With a little practice, most of the overengineering and boiling-out parts can be done in your head.
Particularly while you're new, reread your old code, constantly. Go find things you worked on before and read them again.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
OK this is just flame bait. There's no DJNZ instruction on the x86. Even if it were a macro, you don't put the colon on the reference to a label, only its definition. Which only goes to show: YOU ARE NOT AN ASSEMBLY PROGRAMMER. It's not your fault, you could have been, but you just aren't. I'm so sick of hearing people gripe about the supposed unreadability of assembly code only to find that they're totally unqualified to be touching it in the first place. I can't make head or tails of most Java code either but that's hardly surprising since I don't know Java. Whose fault is that?
Not to say that the code you were looking at wasn't crap code, but I think you're missing the point. Assembly language (as written by grown-ups anyway) typically has three levels of commenting. The line-by-line stuff is absolute nuts and bolts and sometimes does get a bit inane (it certainly shouldn't be explaining what the instruction names mean since assembly programmers already know that, but it's there to walk the reader through the math etc. and keep track of what's happening in the registers), anyway it's really just there to make sure the low-level logic is totally transparent when you're zeroing in on a modification or bug fix. Until that point you don't even look at the line-by-line comments.
Then there will usually be a line or two at the top of each code block saying what the next chunk of code does at a higher level. And then each subroutine has a block comment at the top that explains the whole thing and how to call it and what it returns and how it reports errors. Or if not, fire the programmer!
Typical C programmers tend to see assembly code as hopelessly overcluttered with comments but, don't get me started on typical C code. It's a cultural difference I guess. All the more reason to specialize.
as a "cowboy coder" (for the most part), I'd like to pipe in: ignore everything he just said.
The only way you will ever be any good at programming is by teaching yourself, writing code in your free time, learning everything you can outside of a classroom. AND outside of work.
Too many people think that programming is something they can pick up by taking a class. I've met the results and it's not pretty.
More importantly: You do NOT need to understand the implications of any low-level operation, because as a Jr. Programmer you should not be the one making those decisions. Premature optimization leads to bad code, and too many new programmers focus on things which they are not qualified to write, or have no business writing. (I have yet to encounter a real-world situation when I have needed to write my own sorting function, hash table, or non-basic tree structure)
Always remember that for all things, someone has already written exactly what you are trying to write. Simply because it already exists, it has had more time than what you are writing has had to work out the bugs. For the love of god, don't write your own "database abstraction layer". Always assume that for any task, someone else knows how to do it better- and collaborate with other people constantly to find out how that is.
People who "aren't trained in programming", but program in their spare time are ALWAYS going to be better at writing code than people who "are trained in programming", but have never written a line of code outside of school or work.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
How well do you know exceptions in Java? I haven't tested it myself but read a thread on a J2ME forum in which somebody showed how it is faster to iterate an array if you don't do bounds checking yourself but instead simply catch the ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException because Java checks it anyway and while (true) is fast. People there perform plenty of such tests when they try to optimize their mobile phone games - and gladly admit that it requires some horrible coding practices.
Write functions that do what their names claim they do and NOTHING else. Then comment on non obvious things, pre conditions for algorithms etc but do not put comments in instead of better function names, decomposition etc! Yes, your could should be readable without comments. Oh and yes, pick up many different languages and perhaps most importantly - have fun!
Don't go Overkill,
But if you have to copy/paste a section of code > about 6 lines, it should be put into a Function/Procedure that is globally accessible.
There's nothing worse than finding a bug in a section of code & realise it's in 10+ different places.
Name Functions/Procedures something suitable, readable code will help you & others. (same for variables, unless its obvious).
Rest is pretty much depending on what language ur coding for. I assume its OOP (of some sort).
Another pair of eyes (programmer) is sometimes good as well, another person may think of another approach etc.
And always if in doubt, use google... :)
It worked even for COBOL. If you don't know where you are going, it doesn't matter how you get there.
Readable code is great. Don't use it as an excuse not to comment though. It might be perfectly obvious to you what's happening, but that doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else, and you could easily be pissing someone off without knowing it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Do some programming for fun. Invent a side project for yourself, something you want to do for its own sake. Have fun. Play.
Do you like games? Write a simple game. Do you like math? Write a program that models some mathematical principles.
-kgj
I agree that as developers we should strive to write good, self-describing code that doesn't need comments.
Yet I still tend to write a lot of comments.
Well-written code can convey most of the how of what you're doing, but it rarely can convey the why -- and that's important too.
Suppose I look at code someone else (or even myself) wrote two years ago. I see what I think is an error in how the logic applies one of the business rules.
Is it an error?
Or was it right, and the business rule has changed?
Or is it still right, and there's some reason for the way it is that I don't understand?
Did someone in management mandate a change that runs contrary to the last version of the design docs? Was a more obvious solution tried first, but found to fail under testing?
All of these things are useful to know, and as much as I'm in favor of self-describing code, it rarely can communicate them.
- Approach the job the right way. The goal is not to solve the problem in whatever way possible, but rather to solve it in the cleanest and most easily maintainable/modifiable way. You're not coding to solve today's problem but rather to create code than can be easiliy maintained and modified for the next 10 years.
- Minimalism / clean design. Most often the best design is the one that results in the least amount of code. If you can redesign or recode to result in less code (without reducing the functionality or maintainability) then that is a good thing. You'll quickly learn to regognize clean design/code from that with unnecessary cruft/complexity.
- Push yourself to tackle projects that are at the edge of your capability. You won't learn much doing stuff that is too easy! If work doesn't offer enough challenges (or even if it does), do stuff that stretches you in your spare time.
- Learn new techniques whenever you can. Programming talent is like sharks - it needs to move to stay alive! Whatever language/domain you are working in, try to identity the state of the art tools that others are using, and use them yourself. If you are using C++, learn to use the STL right away (hardly cutting edge, but you'd be surprised how many don't use it).
- Ask questions from more experienced developers whenever they arise, or whenever you suspect there's an easier/better way do to something. You'll advance faster by leveraging the experience of others than by having to repeat all their learning errors yourself!
>> The technical part is easy
Not true. to hack some crappy code together is easy. To do an excellent job isn't.
Yes, and I wanted to break out of *BOTH* loops, not just the inner.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
In general,
like all corporate jobs do as your managers tell you. It matters not if you are wrong or right, it matters not if they are wrong or right, it matters not if you are both wrong, it matters not if you are both right. It matters that they directly control how much you earn and how happy you will be in your role and there is not a damn thing you can do except resign to change things.
Do not publicly dis-agree with your management
Try and make your managers look good
Understand the business you are working in, not just the tech e.g. what is AP/AR/GL
Whatever language you are told to use is OK they all do pretty much the same things using different words. Learn concepts not implementations.
Make efforts to meet your users they are your clients and be respectful to them
The only book you need to pick up is from the pragmatic programmers 'The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master' remember although this book details how to do software dev your management overrides this unless you can convince them otherwise.
There are many other books to pick up but in general pick up classic books not how-tos e.g. pick up Mythical Man Month not Dummies guide to HTML, pick up OOA/OOD/OOP rather than the latest O'Reilly, pick up HTDP/SICP rather than Javascript in 24hrs.
If you wish to transcend the mediocre be prepared to understand that most dev shops are truly mediocre. The current status quo in development is in reality piss poor performance.