[OT] Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it)
Listen to this article
:: Talkr
Stumbled upon this - interesting and funny.
Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it) through Damien Katz blog.
I particularly liked these three points as I have seen people doing it many times.
# You are adamantly opposed to function/methods over 20 lines of code.
(or 30 or 10 or whatever number of lines) Sorry, sometimes a really long function is just what's needed for the problem at hand. Usually shorter functions are easier to understand, but sometimes things are most simply expressed in one long function. Code should not be made more complex to meet some arbitrary standard.
# You think error handling means catching every exception, logging it and continuing on.
That’s not error handling, that’s error ignoring and is the semantically equivalent to “on error next” in VB. Just because it got logged away somewhere doesn’t mean you’ve handled anything. Error handling is hard. If you don’t know exactly what to do in the face of a particular error, then let the exception bubble up to a higher level exception handler.
# You model all your code in UML before you write it.
Enthusiastic UML modeling is typically done by those who aren’t strong coders, but consider themselves software architects anyway. Modeling tools appeal most to those who think coding can be done in conference room by manipulating little charts. The charts aren’t the design, and will never be the design, that’s what the code is for.
Comments
Point 1 is ridiculous. Flash is an intuitive language and I have seen newby programmers do amazing things in flash with 10 lines using enterframes and buttons than far better programmers who fail to do things in 200 lines (cuz they use setIntervals, draw clips using the drawing API, use components and classes they dont need).
Posted by: Paul Ortchanian | May 30, 2006 05:45 PM
I agree with both of you. Setting some arbitrary length by which you test all functions is... well... arbitrary, which by definition is devoid of meaning & purpose. However, at the same time doing one's best to keep code as short and readable as possible is very important, and not arbitrary. It's just keeping it readable and understandable.
~{ zafa }~
Posted by: Gery | May 30, 2006 07:05 PM
if you think you can do more with buttons and onEnterFrame than you can with setInterval and classes, (components belong in the other group), then you don't know actionscripting. onEnterFrame ties all of your animations to the framerate of the main movie (non-organic), and anything but the simplest buttons are more flexible and less memeory intensive as movieclips.
Posted by: emphatic | June 6, 2006 04:09 PM