Been a while since the last blog. Been busy! We added in a ton of new services, merchants, etc. to the website. We now do price comparisons on books, movies, music, and video games! Our new domain is SmartMediaFinder.com. It also encompasses the domains SmartBookFinder.com, SmartMovieFinder.com, SmartMusicFinder.com, and SmartGameFinder.com. We want to be the site you think of when you need anything entertainment related. We have received very positive feedback so far from the user community. Most people do not know such sites like ours exists so they do not end up saving the kind of money they could on our site. Our existence is dependent on the user community since our service is free. Please tell you friends and family about us so we can keep expanding and providing you with this service at no cost. Also, send us feedback on the “Contact Us” form on the website and let us know if you have any idea, suggestions, etc. We are very open to feedback and will take it very seriously. Time to get back to work! Happy 2008!

Regards,

Your Friends at SmartMediaFinder.com

Stay tuned, early 2008 we will be expanding services significantly!

Cheers,

Your Friends at SmartBookFinder.com

(1) Test your code religiously!
Unfortunately it seems these days way too many people just write code then make it ‘live’. This is a horrible mistake. In my opinion you should spend at least as long, if not longer, testing your code as you did writing. Yes, it is not as glamorous but it is necessary. Coders also have an innate tendency to tip-toe around their code, as if subconsciously trying to not break it. Think of odd scenarios that can break your code, try to get satisfaction out of it. Get excited when you find a bug!

(2) Design your code before you write your code
This seems obvious. However, I can not count the number of times I have seen software engineer’s get assigned a project and start coding it the same day. This is a huge mistake because this usually means the code with need re-engineered. Furthermore, I have seen lots of cases where coders start down a path (that is the wrong), get too far down it and are not willing to re-code. Get it right the first time.

(3) Use Javadoc, Doxygen, etc. or some other API Documentation software to document your code.
When working on a big project, it is easy to forget what you did even a couple weeks before. If you document it as your writing it, you and your teammates will be thankful later on. Not to mention the poor sap who has to takeover the code!

(4) Use insightful comments in your code
Another obvious one, however notice the word ‘insightful’. Computer folks have a tendency to, lets say be a little lacking the social realm. Writing comments in binary is not helpful! Write your comments in plain english that would make sense to your High School English Teacher.

(5) Name your classes, functions, variables, etc. according to some predefined standards
When working on a team, there is nothing more annoying then everyone writing their code ‘their own way’. This makes the code very hard to maintain by everyone on the team and very ‘ugly’. Before you write the code, sit down as a team and decide on some standards. I have had times where coder’s have had ‘syntax wars’ where one would move the the ‘{‘ to a newline and other would move it back (come on you know you have done it too).

(6) Don’t be afraid to throw out some code
All good writers will tell you that they toss out 90% or more of what they write (P.S. I am not a good writer as you can probably tell). Coders should not be afraid to do the same thing. Sometimes you will just write crappy code. Just toss it out, start over. The problem with crappy code is it tends to get ‘more crappy’ because it leads you in the wrong direction.

(7) Use a versioning control system
When working on team a versioning control system is a must. I recommend Subversion or CVS. I also recommend you always keep a stable copy of the code ‘tagged’ and available to be built. There will be times where you will introduce a bug and you will need to rollback the code.

(8) Use an IDE
I can all ready hear the vi and emacs die hards cursing at me for this one. However, it is 2007 folks! Lets take advantage of today’s technology, not 1970′s! Using an IDE can drastically speed up development time and in if used right, reduce bugs. I personally recommend Eclipse. Its a great IDE for all Java technologies and also has a C/C++ Plugin.

(9) Do not be allergic to new technologies
Web programming has come a long way since using the CGI interface with PERL (Sorry PERL die hards, but it is true!). Web programming is at point now where you can abstract the majority of the nitty gritty details. Examples of such technologies are Spring and JSF. Also, there is no more need to inline SQL into your programs. Checkout hibernate, it abstracts that from you as well.

(10) Have code reviews & Re-use code when you can
Having a second pair of eye’s can do wonders to the qualify of code. Do not get offended when another software engineer critiques your work. Just look at is as another way to improve the quality of the code. This is an essential part of ‘Extreme Programming’ software engineering methodology.