Craftsmanship Archives - Page 2 of 4

9 Aug

2010

Software, “It’s not what we do”.

By: David Starr Category:UncategorizedTag: Craftsmanship:15 Comments

I get to visit with a lot of developers in a lot of different organizations. Sometimes those developers work for software companies, sometimes they don’t. More often they do not. Most IT professionals don’t work for software companies, after all, and custom software development in these environments is considered an “enabling technology” rather than a […]

4 Aug

2010

Software Craftsmanship on the Polymorphic Podcast

By: David Starr Category:UncategorizedTag: Craftsmanship:1 Comment

I was recently honored to be a guest on Craig Shoemaker?s Polymorphic Podcast. Craig was one of the very first podcasters to focus on .NET and I remember listening to his show on my way to work many years ago. Another cool part for me is that I got to be a guest instead of […]

11 Jul

2010

Enforce Correct Usage By Wrapping Types

By: John Sonmez Category:UncategorizedTag: API, Architecture, Conventions, Craftsmanship:12 Comments

Have you ever written an API or a method and expected it to be used a certain way, but then found people doing all kinds of bad things with your precious API that you never intended? I was working on building an automated testing framework for a welfare system in which cases could be added […]

20 Jun

2010

Prefer Additional Methods Over Additional Overloads

By: John Sonmez Category:UncategorizedTag: Architecture, C#, Craftsmanship:24 Comments

If you have ever written code that is going to be used as an API for other programmers, you may start to think about writing code in a different viewpoint from what you normally do. Most of us write code for the purpose of achieving a goal. If we practice writing elegant code, we are […]

6 Jun

2010

The Best Code You Will Ever Write

By: John Sonmez Category:UncategorizedTag: Craftsmanship:13 Comments

If you?ve been writing code for any decent length of time, you will most likely come to the same conclusion I have. If you?re new to writing code, I?m about to give you the single biggest secret to developing software. The best code you will ever write is? code you never write. No matter how […]

8 May

2010

The Power of Enum

By: John Sonmez Category:UncategorizedTag: C#, Craftsmanship, Documentation:19 Comments

One of the most overlooked tools in modern programming languages for producing elegant code is the enumeration. The enumeration is such a simple concept, yet it yields such a high return in both readability and usability of your code. The enum is able to eliminate the need for XML style comments for a parameter to […]

1 May

2010

Say “No” to “Null”

By: John Sonmez Category:UncategorizedTag: Architecture, C#, Conventions, Craftsmanship:25 Comments

I was recently asked to write a fairly simple piece of code.? In this simple piece of code, I didn?t handle a null input.? I was asked about what kinds of things I would consider about the input, and I pretty much knew what the asker was going after. What do you do if “null? […]

25 Apr

2010

If Self-Documenting Code is the What, Unit Tests are the Why

By: John Sonmez Category:UncategorizedTag: Agile, Architecture, Craftsmanship, Documentation, Unit Testing:6 Comments

It is not enough to just write code that is clean and self-documenting.? Eliminating comments and replacing them with clear variable and method names, will tell the reader of your code clearly what it is doing, but it will not properly express why it is doing it. If you recall from my original post on […]