blog/content/books/things-i-learnt/_index.md

+++ transparent = true title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way (In 30 Years of Software Development)" template = "section-contentless.html" +++

• Intro

• Disclaimer

• Programming

  • Before you start writing code...
    • Spec First, Then Code
    • Write Steps as Comments
    • Gherkin Is Your Friend to Understand Expectations
    • Design Patters Are Used to Name Solution, Not Find Them
    • Thinking Data Flow Beats Patterns
    • The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two
    • Cognitive Cost Is The Readability Killer
    • Learn The Basics of Functional Programming
    • Shortcuts Are Nice, But Only In The Short Run
    • Debuggers Are Overrated
  • Testing Software
    • Unit Tests Are Good, Integration Tests Are Gooder
    • Testing Every Function Creates Dead Code
    • Tests Make Better APIs
    • Make Tests That You Know How To Run On The Command Line
    • Good Languages Come With Tests
  • Documenting your code
    • Documentation Is A Love Letter To Your Future Self
    • The Function Documentation Is Its Contract
    • If A Function Description Includes An "And", It's Wrong
    • Good Languages Come With Integrated Documentation
  • Source Control
    • Always Use A Version Control System
    • One Commit Per Change
  • Project Organization
    • Organize Your Code by Data/Type, Not Functionality
    • Create Libraries
  • Writing code
    • Be Ready To Throw Your Code Away
    • Future Thinking Is Future Trashing
    • Don't Use Booleans As Parameters
    • Beware of Interface Changes
    • It's Better To Let The Application Crash Than Do Nothing
    • If You Know How To Handle It, Handle It
    • Types Say What Your Data Is
    • If Your Data Has a Schema, Use a Structure
    • Don't Mess With Things Outside Your Project
    • Resist The Temptation Of Easy
    • Start Stupid
    • Always Use Timezones With Your Dates
    • Always Use UTF-8 For Your Strings
    • Optimization Is For Compilers
  • Making Things Go
    • The Config File Is Friend
    • Command Line Options Are Weird, But Helpful
    • Not Just Function Composition, But Application Composition
    • Even for Application Composition, Start Stupid
    • Logs Are For Events, Not User Interface
    • Learn To Monitor

• Community/Teams

  • A Language Is Much More Than A Language
  • Understand And Stay Away From Cargo Cult
  • "Right Tool For The Job" Is Just To Push An Agenda
  • The Right Tool Is More Obvious Than You Think