best-practices

A lot of times I'm asked about software best practices, but sometimes it's easier to show a best practice by showing its opposite -- a "worst practice". With that, today I introduce you to a worst practice I call "The Pigpen Developer".

In the category of best practices I have to include my thoughts today on unit tests as a form of "comments/documentation you can compile". Let me explain:

I recently had the experience of (a) working on a small but complicated software development project, (b) leaving that project for six months, and then (c) being asked to work on it again. All I can say it wow -- what a great experience it was to come back to a project that was loaded with unit and code coverage tests.

Continuous integration is a key to a quality build process for any multi-developer software development project. I can't say it much better than the way Martin Fowler describes it, so I'll just include a portion of his summary here:

Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day.

For developers frustrated with end users suffering from IKIWISI ("I'll know it when I see it"), let me share this story with you.

I was reading Dr. Dobbs last night, and they referenced this story about how quantity ends up producing quality, at least when it comes to humans creating things.

The lesson goes like this: A ceramics teacher divides a class into two teams, then tells one team they'll be graded by sheer quantity, while the other side has to produce one great pot. In the end the Quantity Team delivers all the best quality pots.