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
  • 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
  • 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

• Community/Teams

  • A Language Is Much More Than A Language