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• Working with fubar/refuctored code

  - by Keyo

  I'm working with some code which was written by a contractor who left a year ago leaving a number of projects with buggy, disgustingly bad code. This is what I call cowboy PHP, say no more. Ideally I'd like to leave the project as is and never touch it again. Things break, requirements change and it needs to be maintained. Part A needs to be changed. There is a bug I cannot reproduce. Part A is connect to parts B D and E. This kind of work gives me a headache and makes me die a little inside. It kills my motivation and productivity. To be honest I'd say it's affecting my mental health. Perhaps being at the start of my career I'm being naive to think production code should be reasonably clean. I would like to hear from anyone else who has been in this situation before. What did you do to get out of it? I'm thinking long term I might have to find another job. Edit I've moved on from this company now, to a place where idiots are not employed. The code isn't perfect but it's at least manageable and peer reviewed. There are a lot of people in the comments below telling me that software is messy like this. Sure I don't agree with the way some programmers do things but this code was seriously mangled. The guy who wrote it tried to reinvent every wheel he could, and badly. He stopped getting work from us because of his bad code that nobody on the team could stand. If it were easy to refactor I would have. Eventually after many 'just do this small 10minute change' situations had ballooned into hours of lost time (regardless of who on the team was doing the work) my boss finally caved in it was rewritten.

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• Maintainability of Boolean logic - Is nesting if statements needed?

  - by Vaccano

  Which of these is better for maintainability? if (byteArrayVariable != null) if (byteArrayVariable .Length != 0) //Do something with byteArrayVariable OR if ((byteArrayVariable != null) && (byteArrayVariable.Length != 0)) //Do something with byteArrayVariable I prefer reading and writing the second, but I recall reading in code complete that doing things like that is bad for maintainability. This is because you are relying on the language to not evaluate the second part of the if if the first part is false and not all languages do that. (The second part will throw an exception if evaluated with a null byteArrayVariable.) I don't know if that is really something to worry about or not, and I would like general feedback on the question. Thanks.

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• Co-worker uses ridiculous commenting convention, how to cope? [closed]

  - by Jessica Friedman

  A co-worker in the small start-up I work at writes (C++) code like this: // some class class SomeClass { // c'tor SomeClass(); // d'tor ~SomeClass(); // some function void someFunction(int x, int y); }; // some function void SomeClass::someFunction(int x, int y) { // init worker m_worker.init(); // log LOG_DEBUG("Worker initialized"); // find current cache auto it = m_currentCache.find(); // flush if (it->flush() == false) { // return return false } // return return true } This is how he writes 100% of his code: a spacer line, a useless comment which says nothing other than what is plainly stated in the following statement, and the statement itself. This is absolutely driving me insane. A simple class written by him spans 3 times as much as it's supposed to, It looks well commented but the comments contain no new information. In fact the code is completely undocumented in any normal definition of "documentation". All of the comments are just a repetition of what is written in C++ in the following line. I've confronted him several times about it and each time he seems to understand what I am saying but then goes on to not change his coding and not fix old code which is written like this. I've went on and on again and again about the distinct disadvantages of writing code like this but nothing get through to him. Other co-workers doesn't seem to mind it as much and management doesn't seem to really care. What do I do? (sorry for the rant)

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• How to convince my boss to improve code quality?

  - by Vimvq1987

  The place I'm working for is a service provider. We have a lot of services, which are written to deal with deadline, so their code are really terrible: No coding convention, everyone codes in his own style No unit testing (which is really bad) No refactoring (which is truly worse) No automation build/deployment etc and these code are used again and again, so bad code continue to spread all over my department. I really want to set up a standard quality for our code, by requiring everyone to follow "rules": every line of code which does not follow convention will be rejected, and every function of code which does not pass unit testing will not be committed,...But I don't know how to convince my boss to allow me to do this. I'm relatively new comer, so inspiring people from my works is really hard, and I think it's easier if my boss support me to this. Thank you very much for your advices

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• ISO 12207: Verification of integration and Unit test validation

  - by user970696

  I have received comments from the supervisor reviewing my thesis. He asked two questions I cannot answer right now: If ISO 12207 says under "Integration verification" that it "checks that components are correctly and completely integrated into a system", how this can be verified without testing, if all testing is validation? How without testing can I know that system is integrated correctly and fully? If unit testing is validation, how does it match the ISO definiton of validation "that requirements for intended use were fulfilled" if its so low level?

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• Standard -server to server- and -browser to server- authentication method

  - by jeruki

  I have server with some resources; until now all these resources were requested through a browser by a human user, and the authentication was made with an username/password method, that generates a cookie with a token (to have the session open for some time). Right now the system requires that other servers make GET requests to this resource server but they have to authenticate to get them. We have been using a list of authorized IPs but having two authentication methods makes the code more complex. My questions are: Is there any standard method or pattern to authenticate human users and servers using the same code? If there is not, are the methods I'm using now the right ones or is there a better / more standard way to accomplish what I need? Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

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• Should you create a class within a method?

  - by Amndeep7

  I have made a program using Java that is an implementation of this project: http://nifty.stanford.edu/2009/stone-random-art/sml/index.html. Essentially, you create a mathematical expression and, using the pixel coordinate as input, make a picture. After I initially implemented this in serial, I then implemented it in parallel due to the fact that if the picture size is too large or if the mathematical expression is too complex (especially considering the fact that I made the expression recursively), it takes a really long time. During this process, I realized that I needed two classes which implemented the Runnable interface as I had to put in parameters for the run method, which you aren't allowed to do directly. One of these classes ended up being a medium sized static inner class (not large enough to make an independent class file for it though). The other though, just needed a few parameters to determine some indexes and the size of the for loop that I was making run in parallel - here it is: class DataConversionRunnable implements Runnable { int jj, kk, w; DataConversionRunnable(int column, int matrix, int wid) { jj = column; kk = matrix; w = wid; } public void run() { for(int i = 0; i < w; i++) colorvals[kk][jj][i] = (int) ((raw[kk][jj][i] + 1.0) * 255 / 2.0); increaseCounter(); } } My question is should I make it a static inner class or can I just create it in a method? What is the general programming convention followed in this case?

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• Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? (opinion on a dictum by the inventor of Forth)

  - by AKE

  The often provocative Chuck Moore (inventor of the Forth language) gave the following advice (paraphrasing): "Use comments sparingly. Programs are self-documenting, with a modicum of help from mnemonics. Comments should say WHAT the program is doing, not HOW." My question: Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? Update: In addition to the answers below, these two provide additional insight. Beginner's guide to writing comments? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/98609/62203

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• Is writing comments inside methods not a good practice?

  - by Srini Kandula

  A friend told me that writing comments inside methods is not good. He said that we should have comments only for the method definitions(javadocs) but not inside the method body. It seems he read in a book that having comments inside the code means there is a problem in the code. I don't quite understand his reasoning. I think writing comments inside the method body is good and it helps other developers to understand it better and faster. Please provide your comments.

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• Control convention for circular movement?

  - by Christian

  I'm currently doing a kind of training project in Unity (still a beginner). It's supposed to be somewhat like Breakout, but instead of just going left and right I want the paddle to circle around the center point. This is all fine and dandy, but the problem I have is: how do you control this with a keyboard or gamepad? For touch and mouse control I could work around the problem by letting the paddle follow the cursor/finger, but with the other control methods I'm a bit stumped. With a keyboard for example, I could either make it so that the Left arrow always moves the paddle clockwise (it starts at the bottom of the circle), or I could link it to the actual direction - meaning that if the paddle is at the bottom, it goes left and up along the circle or, if it's in the upper hemisphere, it moves left and down, both times toward the outer left point of the circle. Both feel kind of weird. With the first one, it can be counter intuitive to press Left to move the paddle right when it's in the upper area, while in the second method you'd need to constantly switch buttons to keep moving. So, long story short: is there any kind of existing standard, convention or accepted example for this type of movement and the corresponding controls? I didn't really know what to google for (control conventions for circular movement was one of the searches I tried, but it didn't give me much), and I also didn't really find anything about this on here. If there is a Question that I simply didn't see, please excuse the duplicate.

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• if ('constant' == $variable) vs. if ($variable == 'constant')

  - by Tom Auger

  Lately, I've been working a lot in PHP and specifically within the WordPress framework. I'm noticing a lot of code in the form of: if ( 1 == $options['postlink'] ) Where I would have expected to see: if ( $options['postlink'] == 1 ) Is this a convention found in certain languages / frameworks? Is there any reason the former approach is preferable to the latter (from a processing perspective, or a parsing perspective or even a human perspective?) Or is it merely a matter of taste? I have always thought it better when performing a test, that the variable item being tested against some constant is on the left. It seems to map better to the way we would ask the question in natural language: "if the cake is chocolate" rather than "if chocolate is the cake".

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• "static" as a semantic clue about statelessness?

  - by leoger

  this might be a little philosophical but I hope someone can help me find a good way to think about this. I've recently undertaken a refactoring of a medium sized project in Java to go back and add unit tests. When I realized what a pain it was to mock singletons and statics, I finally "got" what I've been reading about them all this time. (I'm one of those people that needs to learn from experience. Oh well.) So, now that I'm using Spring to create the objects and wire them around, I'm getting rid of static keywords left and right. (If I could potentially want to mock it, it's not really static in the same sense that Math.abs() is, right?) The thing is, I had gotten into the habit of using static to denote that a method didn't rely on any object state. For example: //Before import com.thirdparty.ThirdPartyLibrary.Thingy; public class ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper { public static Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(input); //After public class ThirdPartyFactory { public Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... thirdPartyFactoryInstance.newThingy(input); So, here's where it gets touchy-feely. I liked the old way because the capital letter told me that, just like Math.sin(x), ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(x) did the same thing the same way every time. There's no object state to change how the object does what I'm asking it to do. Here are some possible answers I'm considering. Nobody else feels this way so there's something wrong with me. Maybe I just haven't really internalized the OO way of doing things! Maybe I'm writing in Java but thinking in FORTRAN or somesuch. (Which would be impressive since I've never written FORTRAN.) Maybe I'm using staticness as a sort of proxy for immutability for the purposes of reasoning about code. That being said, what clues should I have in my code for someone coming along to maintain it to know what's stateful and what's not? Perhaps this should just come for free if I choose good object metaphors? e.g. thingyWrapper doesn't sound like it has state indepdent of the wrapped Thingy which may itself be mutable. Similarly, a thingyFactory sounds like it should be immutable but could have different strategies that are chosen among at creation. I hope I've been clear and thanks in advance for your advice!

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• How important is it that you know the C++ standard?

  - by Nim

  I did try searching, but I did not see a similar question (either that or my search terminology was incorrect - if so, feel free to close). I am an avid user of SO, and I notice that there are lots of references to the C++ standard in discussions and answers - and I have to admit, I have never read this particular document, the language makes my eyes hurt... So, the question is, can a C++ developer really code for a living without ever having read this document? Is it really important for us mere mortals who are not in the business of writing compilers?

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• What is the worst programmer habit?

  - by 0x4a6f4672

  Many people get into programming because programming is fun. At least in the beginning. After some time doing it professionally, programming is no longer fun, often just hard work. Sometimes we develop bad habits along the way to make it fun again. Some bad habits of programmers are well known, for example the "I fix that in a second" habit, the "reinvent the wheel" practice or the "all code except mine is crap" attitude (which often leads to "I will re-write the entire program from scratch" syndrome). There are things which a programmer should never do. What is the worst programmer habit?

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• Where did the notion of "one return only" come from?

  - by FredOverflow

  I often talk to Java programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example: if (blablabla) return 42; else return 97; "This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!" int result; if (blablabla) result = 42; else result = 97; return result; How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented. Of course, normally I would just write: return (blablabla) ? 42 : 97; But the conditional operator gets even less love among Java programmers. "It's incomprehensible!" Where did this notion of "one return only" come from, and why do people adhere to it rigidly?

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• Assignments in mock return values

  - by zerkms

  (I will show examples using php and phpunit but this may be applied to any programming language) The case: let's say we have a method A::foo that delegates some work to class M and returns the value as-is. Which of these solutions would you choose: $mock = $this->getMock('M'); $mock->expects($this->once()) ->method('bar') ->will($this->returnValue('baz')); $obj = new A($mock); $this->assertEquals('baz', $obj->foo()); or $mock = $this->getMock('M'); $mock->expects($this->once()) ->method('bar') ->will($this->returnValue($result = 'baz')); $obj = new A($mock); $this->assertEquals($result, $obj->foo()); or $result = 'baz'; $mock = $this->getMock('M'); $mock->expects($this->once()) ->method('bar') ->will($this->returnValue($result)); $obj = new A($mock); $this->assertEquals($result, $obj->foo()); Personally I always follow the 2nd solution, but just 10 minutes ago I had a conversation with couple of developers who said that it is "too tricky" and chose 3rd or 1st. So what would you usually do? And do you have any conventions to follow in such cases?

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• Custom HTML Tags: Are there any specifications stating a standard way to handle them?

  - by blesh

  It seems like for years they've just been given default styling and inline display. Is there a spec somewhere that has dictated this? I've looked over the RFC's but I'm not particularly good with RFC-ese, and I didn't notice anything anywhere. For example <body> Some content <mycustomtag>something else</mycustomtag> more content. </body> I can still style it with CSS, and the browser doesn't outright vomit... so it seems like there is some sort of expected behavior. Was that dictated by a specification?

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• What should NOT be included in comments? (opinion on a dictum by the inventor of Forth)

  - by AKE

  The often provocative Chuck Moore (inventor of the Forth language) gave the following advice (paraphrasing): "Use comments sparingly. Programs are self-documenting, with a modicum of help from mnemonics. Comments should say WHAT the program is doing, not HOW." My question: Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? Update: In addition to the answers below, these two provide additional insight. 1: Beginner's guide to writing comments? 2: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/98609/62203

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• Why do most of us use 'i' as a loop counter variable?

  - by kprobst

  Has anyone thought about why so many of us repeat this same pattern using the same variable names? for (int i = 0; i < foo; i++) { // ... } It seems most code I've ever looked at uses i, j, k and so on as iteration variables. I suppose I picked that up from somewhere, but I wonder why this is so prevalent in software development. Is it something we all picked up from C or something like that? Just an itch I've had for a while in the back of my head.

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• Single quotes vs double quotes

  - by Eric Hydrick

  I just started a job where I'm writing Python after coming from a Java background, and I'm noticing that other developers tend to quote strings using single quotes ('') instead of double quotes (""). For example: line1 = 'This is how strings typically look.' line2 = "Not like this." Is there a particular reason for this other than personal preference? Is this the proper way to be quoting strings?

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• Eliminating Magic Numbers: When is it time to say "No"?

  - by oosterwal

  We're all aware that magic numbers (hard-coded values) can wreak havoc in your program, especially when it's time to modify a section of code that has no comments, but where do you draw the line? For instance, if you have a function that calculates the number of seconds between two days, do you replace seconds = num_days * 24 * 60 * 60 with seconds = num_days * HOURS_PER_DAY * MINUTES_PER_HOUR * SECONDS_PER_MINUTE At what point do you decide that it is completely obvious what the hard-coded value means and leave it alone?

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• Good practices when writing a parser for a standard file format (such as ePub)

  - by J-F L-R

  I am considering writing an Android reader software that can read ePubs and display them. I checked the ePub standard documents. However, these contain a lot of information. So I am wondering what is the process of implementing a standard for a file format. What are the steps to get a working implementation without passing by parts of the standard? Are there any best practices? Also, is it even possible to program this alone in a reasonable time? From what I have already found out, ePub is basically a zip archive. That means I could probably use zlib to decompress it. The content is in XHTML and CSS, so I believe it should be possible to display it in a WebView. The parts that are missing are writing the code that can read the metadata and manage the non-standard XHTML extensions.

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• how to give meaningful id to the things in database

  - by gcc

  There are a lot of manuals. I am trying to create an database to hold information of these documents. But, there is a small problem. How can I give meaningful id to the manuals? Are there any standard or logic behind the giving meaningful id to the documents? If there is no standard, can you tell me how I should do that? example: table : manual id | manual name EDIT: Not Meaningful ID 1 or M1 or foo 2 C2 bar 3 P123 name ... ... ... (i) (ii) (iii) (i) Not meaningful for me because if some item deleted, there can be gap. ex 1 33 100. (ii) random character can be confusing when one try to give a name to new manual (iii) Why giving name is not preferred is because finding a name to the manual as ID is hard after 500 manuals. Meaningful : New ID * Can be easily produced even if after 1000 manuals * Should not be so complicated

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• Is it wrong to use a boolean parameter to determine behavior?

  - by Ray

  I have seen a practice from time to time that "feels" wrong, but I can't quite articulate what is wrong about it. Or maybe it's just my prejudice. Here goes: A developer defines a method with a boolean as one of its parameters, and that method calls another, and so on, and eventually that boolean is used, solely to determine whether or not to take a certain action. This might be used, for example, to allow the action only if the user has certain rights, or perhaps if we are (or aren't) in test mode or batch mode or live mode, or perhaps only when the system is in a certain state. Well there is always another way to do it, whether by querying when it is time to take the action (rather than passing the parameter), or by having multiple versions of the method, or multiple implementations of the class, etc. My question isn't so much how to improve this, but rather whether or not it really is wrong (as I suspect), and if it is, what is wrong about it.

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• When is it appropriate to use colour in a command-line application?

  - by marcoms

  Currently I have a command-line application in C called btcwatch. It has a -C option that it can receive as an argument that compares the current price of Bitcoin with a price that was stored beforehand with -S. Example output with this option is: $ btcwatch -vC # -v = verbose buy: UP $ 32.000000 USD (100.000000 -> 132.000000) sell: UP $ 16.000000 USD (100.000000 -> 116.000000) The dilemma is whether to use colour for the UP or DOWN string (green and red, respectively). Most command-line applications I know of (apart from git) stay away from colour in their output. In my desire for btcwatch to look and be quite "standard" (use of getopt, Makefiles, etc), I'm not sure if colour would look out of place in this situation.

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