Trade-Offs
Of course, we want the best of all worlds. We want our code to be clear and performant and extendable. But what happens when benefits are at odds with each other? What happens when, for example, in order to gain some clarity and improve maintainability we have to sacrifice some performance? Of course, the answer …
Read MorePair Programming Pointers
Pair programming is the one Extreme Programming practice that I get the most pushback from both developers and managers. Most of us have experience programming as a solitary art form and we’ve done it alone. We figured out a bunch of things for ourselves and we don’t necessarily feel comfortable doing our work in the …
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Read MoreThe Stigma Around Refactoring
Refactoring is a critically important concept in software. Anyone involved in the software industry should understand exactly what refactoring is and why it’s valuable. Refactoring is not just the redesign of code. The redesign must behave exactly in the same way as it did before. In many situations, this also means bug-for-bug compatibility as well …
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Read MoreRead, Write, and Refactor
A couple of years ago I got to realize a lifelong dream when I became a published author. I was surprised to learn that many of the skills that I gained in becoming a good software developer were actually useful to me in becoming a good writer. Like code, prose should be well-encapsulated and cohesive, …
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