Application development Toolkit

Seven habits of effective developers

Tags:
Developers,
Programming

Eileen Yu ZDNet Asia

Published: 22 Aug 2007 11:08 BST

...you need to keep them clear. Don't squash them, just like how you would apply text spacing when you write a novel."

Think also about how you organise and label your codes.

Lee said: "Put yourself as an author; how would you write something that others can easily understand and follow your thoughts? That's how a programmer should code as well."

While there are no standard code layouts or models software developers can adopt, there are recommended coding practices, Lee said.

Programmers working on a Java platform, for example, can visit websites that recommend certain methods of naming variables, he added. "So there are conventions which most Java developers would already know," Lee said.

5. Learn to debug
Identify bugs early in the development process, and deploy automated testing tools, such as JUnit.

Tests will help ensure the program performs the task you developed it to do.

"A reasonably sized commercial application is never bug-free, especially operating systems or big applications," Lee said. "So developers try to do tests to remove fatal bugs that can render an application unusable or bring the whole site down."

He reiterated the importance of maintaining "clean" codes, noting that developers should always know what they are adding to their codes as they could easily inherit bugs from external sources.

"Sometimes, there are bugs in your codes or in other [software] libraries that you may have bought or downloaded that you cannot control," Lee said, underscoring the need for developers to "test early; test often".

There's commercialisation [in software development] but there's also 'art' and 'good' codes. And you can achieve both

Lee Chuk Munn, Sun

Software engineers can reduce the time to debug by isolating the faulty code, and fixing and retesting this particular section before piecing it back into the main program.

"For example, when you click on menu item one and two in the program before a bug appears, you'll have to keep going through levels one and two every time you test and debug the program," Lee explained. "So, instead of doing that, pull out this piece of code, test it and debug as a standalone. Once you're certain it's fixed, then incorporate it back into the [main] code."

6. Leverage what is available
Developers should also look for solutions or algorithms that are already publicly available, such as on developer forums and mailing lists.

Asked if this would increase the risk of a security breach, since the program will be based on codes that the public can easily access, Lee replied that this was not necessarily so.

"For example, the public key infrastructure (PKI) is pretty well-known and the mathematics [behind the model] are also well-known. But, if you want to crack it, it's difficult because the key generation [code] is still kept private," he explained. "So, you can use public data but safeguard the codes that are critical to secure your application."

7. Continue to learn
Finally, like any other profession, software developers must always continue to learn, pick up new skills and improve.

Engineers can also learn from conducting a post-mortem or an evaluation after a project has been completed, Lee added. "We need to learn from our good and bad [projects], and try and be better the next time, and the next time after that," he said.

Can developers then balance the commercial need to push out applications as quickly as possible with the need to write codes that are clean?

Lee believes they can. "A lot of people say, if they don't have quantity time, at least they have quality. That's not true... You can't have quality time if you don't put in quantity time," he said. "There's commercialisation [in software development] but there's also 'art' and 'good' codes. And you can achieve both."