Tips for Programmers

Do you want to save on your efforts and get to know what the end user really wants?

You have been asked to implement some program and you have been brainstorming. You got all kinds of ideas of how the user might be helped by adding this and that. You have taken into account all kinds of scenarios and provided lots of parameters. Well, let me tell you that most probably you are over providing. Your imagination produced all these ideas, but they are not necessarily what the user needs.

Do you want to avoid that your program fails on its first demonstration?

Ok, you have just finished squeezing the best of the best out of your brain. The program is finished!

Do you want to find bugs really fast?

First admit that you are not perfect and that there may be mistakes in your own programs. When you must find a bug, you need to narrow down to the exact spot where things go wrong. Insert code to show messages throughout your program. Or use a debugger to trace the execution path. Then apply the binary search method: Find the spot in your code about halfway the supposed execution path.

Do you know what to do when the logic is right but it still doesn't work?

I remember when I was implementing a program for my thesis. In one of my routines the program did not behave as expected. I tested and tested again. The programming logic looked fine, but it did not produce the expected result. After thorough testing and thinking out of the box I found that a specific variable was being overwritten unexpectedly — the code generated by the compiler itself was faulty.

Do you want to save lots of time when producing programs?

Often when you must produce a new program or add something to an existing one you will find that it is similar to something you have done before. Or someone in your company did something similar before. Do not reinvent the wheel every time. Look through what you or others have programmed before and find what is most similar to what you need now. Copy it and modify the copy. This can save you enormous amounts of time.