devSolo

After reading the book Clean Code by Robert Martin, I am increasingly paranoid about which room is talking about me. This comic was his introduction to the introduction of the book.

I certainly hope that any programmers that look at my code would sound like the code review on the left. But of course that’s a fantasy.  I’m actually finding it a challenge balancing my goals. 

1. Make sure your code can be understood by the “guy that comes after me.”
2. Get work done!

But here is my dilemma… In using 3LA’s to make me a more productive programmer, am I making it harder for the “guy that comes after me" to follow my code? 

I think this all depends on who “the guy that comes after me” is.  This guy will most probably only know VB.  And he won’t know a unit test from a integration test.  In fact, he probably will think a test is what big companies have a dedicated department to do.  “Did you test your code?” “Yes, I clicked every button, and even made sure the program crashes gracefully.”

And what about Dependency Injection… and I’m not talking about StructureMap, NInject, Windsor, or Unity.  I mean Poor Mans Dependency Injection.  DI as a pattern, not an application. "um, whats a pattern?”. 

/facepalm, *ouch* ok I /facepalmed extra hard and knocked myself off my soapbox. (be nice)

Ok, 5 things that I would want the “guy that comes after me” to know.

1. Source Control
2. Unit Testing
3. Dependency Injection (a.k.a. Loosely coupled code)
4. Build Scripts
5. Object Oriented Programming w/ Interfaces  (shouldn’t this be assumed)

I’ll expand on these points in later posts.

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