Comments on: Sniff Out That Smelly Code

By: links for 2009-10-24 « Donghai Ma

links for 2009-10-24 « Donghai Ma — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:04:24 +0000

[...] Sniff Out That Smelly Code (tags: programming code tips refactoring development coding oop) [...]

By: KIZILSUNGUR

KIZILSUNGUR — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:48:22 +0000

Great article!!!

http://pythontr.jimdo.com/

– KIZILSUNGUR

By: Travis

Travis — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:24:32 +0000

Nothing worse than having to go through line after line of somebody ELSE’s ill-written code…

By: Leviathan

Leviathan — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:28:34 +0000

Laziness is a programming virtue.

By: Omar Al Kababji

Omar Al Kababji — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:21:54 +0000

I agree with almost every point, however even a copy operation is useful in an IDE of course not to duplicate a piece of code which is bad since you have to be DRY (don’t repeat yourself). but sometimes you really need it, for example in EJB2 if you are using xDoclet you may need to keep copying the function meta tags repeatedly. or for example to copy the XML for creating a struts action and then refine it… there are many situations that need a Ctrl + C

I have wrote an article about efficient software development please visit it:

http://omarkababji.weebly.com/1/post/2009/08/efficient-software-development-12.html

Omar.

By: dethrophes

dethrophes — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:56:25 +0000

Hi
First point the need or lack there of for copy and paste is I believe related to the IDE/editor and weither it supports auto complete or not. I prefer a simpler editor and use copy and paste for function templates etc…

I agree comments are bad in general largely because of seeing code like this.
for (i=0;i<3600;i++) /* 60 minutes */
Basically because the comment don’t get updated with the code.

so it should be written more like
for(i=0;i<60*NUM_SEC_IN_MIN;i++)

Regarding Function argument I agree because of the stack overhead incurred.
However also due to stack overhead I only partially agree with function breakup, unless function inlining is supported with the compiler.

By: Coding Guidelines « Niamathbasha’s Weblog

Coding Guidelines « Niamathbasha’s Weblog — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:19:44 +0000

[...] 13, 2009 Coding Guidelines 1. Long [...]

By: TJO

TJO — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:24:53 +0000

Your nuts with some of this crap. Over the top idealistic. Give it a rest.

By: PHP Coder

PHP Coder — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:35:13 +0000

I willingly admit, I mostly code for fun and to create things that often only I use, so I am probably guilty of a lot of those things and don’t consider myself a ‘code guru’ or whatever. However, my mostly used language is PHP in web development type projects with MYSQL and I have to say that I firmly disagree with the copy and paste issue. I constantly am copying code from one page to another or one part of a page to another. Not because I am leaving it exactly as it is, but because the basic structure is there that I need. A good example is a MYSQL query. Whether I’m updating, selecting, or deleting, or whatever, each of those query types has a basic structure, and I use mostly the same vairables defining the queries and whatnot. So when I have a query that is updating 10 fields in one table on one page, and I have another part of a page or another whole page that is updating say 8 fields on a different table maybe, to me copying the 10 field query, updating the one word values and field names (by a nice double click to highlight the word) and deleting the 2 unneeded field updates is way easier and less time consuming than re-writing the entire update query with all it’s various fun coding symbols ({}[];”\’$?). This is just one example of an incident where I think that copy and paste is not only ok, but more effecient. That’s just me though, good article, and go ahead and tell me if you think there is a better way to accomplish such a feat. Myabe my carpals just aren’t as masachistic as yours…

By: Seth

Seth — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:09:07 +0000

narcolepsy: +1

commented out code: anyone defending on account of ‘preservation’ confuses his source file (your precious gold) with a scrap yard.
— ‘We’d have to write it again’?! (*SHOCK*) Aren’t you using a revision control system for that? Barf…
— ‘Our users are vascillating between requirements’ — we use branches/patchsets for that purpose.

Learn to use version control. Do not (ever) comment out code (except during unit testing and before commit).