Programming best practices

good programming practices 
using best practices when developing a program/project will help to make successful product without bugs. here are some best practices which needs to follow when developing a project.


Omit needless codes

Needless codes will make the codes unreadable and hard to understand. It will make hard to find the errors when any error has occur. Needless codes will add “lines of code” to the project and will support to earn more money to the developer. But when he/she needs to troubleshoot, needless codes will make hard to find the errors. Sometimes the needless codes will make some critical/hard to identify errors.

Identify duplicate codes

Identifying duplicate codes will helps to remove unnecessary “lines of codes” and will ease the debugging process. Editing the same code at several places will waste some time and delays the deployment of the project. So, it's better if the developer could identify duplicate codes and use that particular code at one place and linking that code to everyplace that needed. It will ease the editing/debugging process because developer no need to find everyplace to edit/debug and editing/debugging a single place will affects to the everyplace which the code is linked.

Using less number of “lines of codes”

When lines of code increased , the project will become large/heavy in size and hard to troubleshoot. So,the developer should use less number of “lines of codes”. Then the project will be smaller in size and will ease the troubleshooting process.

Commenting the codes

When developing a project, it's better if the developer could “comment” the every part of the program. It will helps to identify the usage of that particular “lines of code” and will ease the management/troubleshooting/update process of the program at later time.

Plan Development Process/Life-cycle

Planning the development process/life-cycle helps to determine every part of the development according to a structured plan. Then developer will not forget to do something important on his/her development process.

Plan the time line

Planning the time line will help to identify every work which have to do according to the time and developer could identify what should do in particular day and he/she could predict the development process according to the time.

Gathering Requirements.

Gathering requirements helps to develop the exact program which needs to built. If not programmer will end up with missing some requirements and will be unsuccessful. If the programmer didn't develop the program to fulfill the needs/requirements then developing the program will be useless.

Design

Selecting a suitable design will ease to use program by the user.

Coding separate parts and integrate them in to the main program.

It will ease troubleshoot and testing process as well as the coding process.

Testing

Without testing the developer can't identify the errors. If the developer didn't test his/her codes till the end of the development process, when he/she find any error will make him to edit/code many “lines of code” and it will make many errors. Editing many “lines of code” at the last time will make the programmer unsuccessful.

Performance testing

programmer should develop the program to give the actual performance to the user. So, performance testing will help to identify the missing parts and several errors which leads to minimize the performance.

Deployment

This is the last stage of the development process. This is the stage that user gets the project. Sometimes it will be failed due to some reasons and if it failed , user can't use the project as expected. Before deployment, developer should check a “deployment checklist” to ensure that user could use the product as expected.

System operations and support

There should be a method to identify errors when running the program. So, if there is a method to collect/identify the errors/bugs when running the program will be ease the work of “debugging”

Data migration

It's better if the program could support to the files/data which used in older/other programs. It will help to save the time to enter data into the new program because if there is an older program, user could use the data which associated with that old program inside the new program.

Project Management

Project management is the main part of the development process and it ensures that the existence programming best practices and follows the best practices.

Measuring success

checking the final project meets the industry standards.

Source:
Best practices for software development projects
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0306_perks/perks2.html
Accessed on 02/24/2010 07:16 AM