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The Hard-Core Coder

~ I can't stop writing code!

The Hard-Core Coder

Tag Archives: computer programming

Naming Things (redux)

27 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

code clarity, computer code, computer programming, readable code

The first article (long, long ago) about naming things only scratched the surface. Even with company and language guidelines (or other rules) to help, with so many things to name it’s easy to lose control. Even now, after 44 years of writing code, I still sometimes find myself staring at the screen trying to think of what to name some object.

It’s understandable; there are a lot of things to think about when it comes to a name.

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The Synchronization Problem

29 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

code clarity, computer code, computer programming, readable code, synchronization

One of the great battles programmers fight involves synchronization between two different parts of the code. The most common example of this is what the comments say versus what the code really does. Another common example is the structure of data stored somewhere (like a database) and the code that manipulates it.

A lot of the programmer’s effort and technique is devoted to managing, if not preventing, synchronization issues. The rules encouraging encapsulation, or against global objects, have a lot to do with this goal.

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Abusing #define in C

19 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

code clarity, computer code, computer programming, defined values, readable code

When I was a callow young programmer learning the ropes and enjoying the sheer power of the C language, I got a bit carried away with the macro pre-processor’s ability to let you redefine the language.

As much fun as that is, and as much as it can make your source code look cool, it’s a really bad idea. At some point the folks in comp.lang.c read me the riot act about it, and they were right.

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Always Implement toString

02 Tuesday Nov 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

code clarity, computer code, computer languages, computer programming, Java, Python code, readable code, toString, __str__

Although I’m categorizing this one as really good advice, rather than as a rule, I think it should be viewed as basically a rule. I think it should be a rule in any object-oriented language that supports it natively (Java and Python, for example).

The advice (rule of thumb, say) is to always create a useful implementation of toString when you create a class. It makes your development and maintenance life ever so much better.

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Thinking Ahead

05 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Computer Language magazine, computer programmers, computer programming

I’ve been going through my old Computer Language magazines, and man have things changed since 1984. It’s a fascinating trip through the early days of personal computing.

I was reading an article about using dates in an application and was struck by the prescience of one bit.

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Function Currying

22 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

computer code, computer programming, function currying, Python code, software design, software development

I saw a video recently about function currying, and it triggered the realization that currying might solve a problem I’ve been pondering in the context of language parsing. The problem involves knowing how many arguments an operator expects, what’s called the arity of an operation or function. It can vary from zero to many.

But it occurred to me that, with currying, there could be a language where operations always take just one argument. And that would solve a challenge for a mathematical expression language I have in mind.

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Rule #5: Always Use Parentheses

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in CS101

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

code clarity, computer programming, operator precedence, order of operations, parentheses, readable code, software design

Enough stories, time for a new rule. Which is to always use parentheses in all except the simplest of math expressions. Languages have a precedence protocol, so the compiler can figure it out, but human readers may be confused.

As always, the underlying motivation involves code clarity for other humans reading the source code — the most important rule of all.

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DataCollector Factories

16 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development

Last time I introduced the DataCollector application, but didn’t have room to get into the use of factory classes. There isn’t often a need for a factory class, but they can be useful when you need to create objects at run-time without knowing their class until then.

The general approach involves a function that returns instances of a class based on run-time information. In some cases the instances are limited to a predetermined set of classes, in other cases it can any class the known to the code.

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DataCollector

29 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development

When I first posted about my DataBridge utility I mentioned the DataCollector, which was a Java-based framework for quickly building apps that interacted via web services with a third-party CRM services provider.

In this post I’ll introduce the DataCollector framework. For obvious proprietary reasons, this will be fairly generic, but I think the basic architecture is worth sharing. It’s a nice example of using factory classes.

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DataBridge Drivers

07 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Stories

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

computer programmer, computer programming, data, Java, software, software design, software development

Last time I started the story of my DataBridge application — a Java-based tool for transferring and transforming tabular data, such as TAB, CSV, and XML files. It could also read from and write to ODBC tables.

The app itself was just a framework that implemented a basic IPO model to transfer data. The details were up to the Input, Process (in this case, Mapping), and Output, drivers loaded at run time.

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Wyrd Smythe

Wyrd Smythe

The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.

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