Blog Journeys of a Lifelong Learner

Saints, stormed and surrounded by seismic seductions and slithering serpents, struggle and strive to stop serving sin, seeking, seeing, and spreading the satisfaction of the Savior.

Programmers who have moved into the realm of understanding always suspect their own work first because they know that they cause 95 percent of errors. Understand the role of each line of code and why it’s needed. Nothing is ever right just because it seems to work. If you don’t know why it works, it probably doesn’t—you just don’t know it yet.

Bottom line: A working routine isn’t enough. If you don’t know why it works, study it, discuss it, and experiment with alternative designs until you do.

Steve McConnell in Code Complete

Compiling before you’re sure your program works is often a symptom of the hacker mindset. If you’re not caught in the hacking-and-compiling cycle, compile when you feel it’s appropriate. But be conscious of the tug most people feel toward “hacking, compiling, and fixing” their way to a working program.

Steve McConnell in Code Complete

The vicious cycle of hacking and (in the case of web development) refreshing is highly tempting, but it does not foster development excellence.

The best way to prepare for future work is not to design extra layers of base classes that “might be needed someday;” it’s to make current work as clear, straightforward, and simple as possible. That means not creating any more inheritance than is absolutely necessary.

Steve McConnell in Code Complete

Code is read far more times than it's written, even during initial development. Favoring a technique that speeds write-time convenience at the expense of read-time convenience is a false economy.

Steve McConnell in Code Complete

I must heed this prudent counsel more frequently.