Comments in Code

Comments In Our Code: Necessary or Not?

Robert Rice Development Technologies, Programming 1 Comment

No matter what your opinion is on comments, one thing is universally true: developers should create code that the next developer can understand.

Sometimes, comments are a safe, simple way to leave the code better than how you found it. Sometimes, extracting sections of code into a well-named method can be an alternative way of doing this, with the added benefit that (a) you can test this method individually and (b) it may help you to spot smells in your code or see places for further refactoring or simplification.

Each situation you encounter will require different treatment, but I hope this post has given you a starting place for creating clean, readable code in your own life!

Developer Experience First in Code

Four Ways of Writing Thoughtful Code to Think Less

Ryan Brewer Opinion, Programming 3 Comments

Long before I was offloading brainpower to Stack Overflow, I sought to offload it for my future self (ahem, and teammates of course). I have a book to thank for this. Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think.”  It’s a critique of complex user interfaces.

Steve likes them simple and intuitive: the users’ goals are evident and easily accomplished.

Steve’s adage–“don’t make me think”–also plays a fair critique of the code we write. We can take that adage and apply it as a “DX First” approach to writing code. (An approach that admittedly should be sacrificed to UX or Performance Gods as needed.)

In this article I illustrate four high-level ways of elevating the developer experience to the forefront, helping us grok more while thinking less.

Markdown for Documenting

Documenting with Markdown

Rik Scarborough Development Technologies, Programming Leave a Comment

In today’s environment, we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to documenting our applications. We have a multitude of word processors, websites with word processors built in, wikis, and notes applications galore.

So you may be wondering, is there even any point in talking about ways to document your application? I think there is. In this blog, I’ll share my documentation tool and how and why you can use it in your own projects. It’s called Markdown.

Code For Maintainability So The Next Developer Doesn’t Hate You

Rik Scarborough Programming 7 Comments

Attention: The following article was published over 9 years ago, and the information provided may be aged or outdated. Please keep that in mind as you read the post.Unless your problem domain includes some specific need for highly optimized code, consider what is your biggest coding priority. I’m going to suggest that you make it maintainability. There was an online meme …