How I Write Code
blog.bigzaphod.org
blog.bigzaphod.org
Yes, I occasionally spend an unreasonable amount of time deciding how to name a variable.
But what is "unreasonable". If 30 minutes of agonizing over a name (and a standard) saves me 6 hours of debugging next month, was it really unreasonable?
Of course, it does. It is a simpler version of "Do you care enough to write elegant code ?".
Of course, I don't work on very hard problems, so I'm sure that's different for everyone.
If you have difficulty naming a variable, it could be because you don't have a good grasp of either the problem or your solution, or concepts are conflated. It could be because you don't yet have a vocabulary that provides the terms you need -- imagine if you didn't have the words "result" or "set", but were trying to name a variable to hold the output of a query. It could be that your functions don't do just one thing.
It could even be because your language isn't expressive enough.
I can generally tell when I'm doing things 'right' because decomposing the problem into functions, naming them, and composing them into a solution is easy: it feels like I'm cutting with the grain, not against it.
In this way, coding is like writing a speech or a poem. Deliberating on precisely the right words to use is a key part of the process, and the better your grip on the domain and your arguments, the easier it is to find the words.
Regarding the ordering of milestones, where there is some discretion available I tend to do things that will keep the client happy. The objective is to deliver the project on time with the minimum level of stress for all involved.
I don't lie about in bed dreaming about imaginary packets.
Either way, at some point, I find a good place to start hacking and I feel the urge to say it in code (mainly Python, currently).
When coding, I start by doing the smallest thing that I can run and verify in some way. I keep adding stuff in small increments. I only get back at the notebook when I can't think of, or decide, what to do next.
Then I start working to code it. I start with the main functionality, I wrote it as I want it to be inventing the required methods. When I'm happy with it I code the required extra-methods. Write tests for them. Write tests for the main functionality. When it works as excepted, a couple iterations of reviewing and re-factoring.
I'm not sure about the details about how I code the methods, it seems I'm so focused doing it I cannot recall the how. (I guess many of us have the sensation of "OMG! How I did it?" or seeing we've wrote much more code than we thought).
The unfortunate byproduct of this is that my code ends up looking very confusing, even to me, and I have to do some major cleanup on it before I let anyone else look at it.
at home I just swear at my computer until things work the way I want them to.
1. Copy the smallest piece of code I've already written and change it slightly to do something really small. Get it working perfectly.
2. Add a little bit. Get it working perfectly.
3. Add a little bit more. Get it working perfectly.
4. Repeat until it's not so easy to add anything, even a little bit. Print a hard copy. Holy shit! Did I write all that?
5. Mark it up like crazy with a red pen. Combine similar code into common functions. Rename variables. Rename them again. Rename them again. Rename them to what they originally were, but without vowels. Restructure unwieldy functions. Rewrite the stuff I can't believe I actually wrote myself.
6. Sit down at terminal and enter changes. Save every version (even though I never look at it again). Get it to work perfectly (again). Holy shit! What did I do? It's totally broken! Debug, debug, debug. Good. Now it runs perfectly. Time to add more...go back to Step 1. (Except every 5th time through this loop: Scrap it all and rewrite it the way I should have in the first place.)
7. Repeat until dead.