Seeds on Software Development Fields

2011-01-05T13:06:00.003+02:00

Free Will chooses causes, Fate handles consequences.

2010-02-11T13:30:00.003+02:00

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

Martin Fowler

2010-01-26T17:21:00.001+02:00

There is an incremental person who, when added to a project, makes it take longer, not less time.
Brook's law, by Fred Brooks, Mythical Man-Month

2009-10-20T12:01:00.001+03:00

Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Occam's razor

2009-10-14T18:07:00.004+03:00

Techniques that make good code look good and bad code look bad are more useful than techniques that make all code look good.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2009-09-23T12:38:00.002+03:00

There has never been a shortage of claims that C++ was a dead end—often by people busily imitating it.
Bjarne Stroustrup, Expounds on Concepts and the Future of C++

2009-07-22T12:21:00.000+03:00

One key to effective programming is learning to make mistakes quickly, learning from them each time. Making a mistake is no sin. Failing to learn from a mistake is.

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2009-05-27T10:55:00.000+03:00

Make things as simple as possible—but no simpler.
Albert Einstein

2009-05-12T17:25:00.002+03:00

It's easy to confuse motion with progress, busy-ness with being productive. The most important work in effective programming is thinking, and people tend not to look busy when they're thinking. If I worked with a programmer who looked busy all the time, I'd assume that he was not a good programmer because he wasn't using his most valuable tool, his brain.

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2009-04-30T20:46:00.003+03:00

C++ doesn't try to make it impossible for bad programmers to write bad programs; it enables reasonable developers to create superior software.

Marshall Cline, C++ FAQ Lite ( www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/)

2009-04-22T19:26:00.005+03:00

That is one thing that annoys me about Java: the way some committee somewhere decides to leave things awkward or inconsistent just because they believe I am a bad programmer. It's a programming language for corporate entities who don't trust their employees.

setok (commenter),
What I Hate About Your Programming Language (Article at www.oreillynet.com)

2009-02-16T13:02:00.001+02:00

The whole job of programming is building air castles—it's one of the most purely mental activities you can do.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2009-01-22T18:34:00.003+02:00

Having goals is a pain in the neck.
[...]
Not having a goal lets you make a ruckus, or have more fun, or spend time doing what matters right now, which is, after all, the moment in which you are living.
The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run.

It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact... those people have goals.

The thing about goals, Seth Godin

2009-01-19T12:32:00.000+02:00

Most good programmers need to think twice to understand expressions with side effects. Let them use their brain cells to understand the larger questions of how your code works rather than the syntactic details of a specific expression.

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2009-01-10T18:02:00.003+02:00

Good character is mainly a matter of having the right habits. To be a great programmer, develop the right habits and the rest will come naturally.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2009-01-08T12:55:00.007+02:00

C++ is a wonderful language that I enjoy using daily. [...] C++ has more power than any of us can handle all at once. I doubt that there are more than half a dozen people on the planet (and I have specific names in mind here) who are true experts in the entirety of C++, from the core language to all the facets (pun intended) of the standard library. Most of the rest of us can only aspire to know a few narrow areas in depth and the whole reasonably well.
Fortunately, there's no need for us to all be Stroustrups or Koenigs to get concrete benefits from C++. Just avoid the dusty corners of the language, and remember that cuteness hurts in many ways. Above all, "write what you know, and know what you write," and you'll certainly do well!

Herb Sutter, Advice From the C++ Experts: Write What You Know, and Know What You Write

2009-01-05T20:37:00.000+02:00

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
Mark Twain

2008-12-29T11:32:00.001+02:00

The bottom line on experience is this: if you work for 10 years, do you get 10 years of experience or do you get 1 year of experience 10 times?

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-12-22T12:26:00.000+02:00

If you want to be great, you're responsible for making yourself great. It's a matter of your personal character.

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-12-18T10:15:00.001+02:00

Goto labels should be leftaligned in all caps and should include the programmer's name, home phone number, and credit card number.

Abdul Nizar

2008-12-14T13:16:00.000+02:00

It's almost impossible to identify performance bottlenecks before a program is working completely. Programmers are very bad at guessing which four percent of the code accounts for 50 percent of the execution time, and so programmers who optimize as they go will, on average, spend 96 percent of their time optimizing code that doesn't need to be optimized. That leaves little time to optimize the four percent that really counts.

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-12-08T11:22:00.003+02:00

Rules of Optimization:

Rule 1. Don't do it.

Rule 2 (for experts only). Don't do it yet—that is, not until you have a perfectly clear and unoptimized solution.

M. A. Jackson

2008-12-05T13:29:00.002+02:00

If you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras. The OS is probably not broken. And the database is probably just fine.

Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer

2008-12-03T10:40:00.002+02:00

Children sometimes think that if they close their eyes and can't see you, they've made you go away. Setting a switch on the compiler to turn off warnings just means you can't see the errors. It doesn't make them go away any more than closing your eyes makes an adult go away.

Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-11-28T14:53:00.003+02:00

If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.

Albert Einstein

2008-11-18T14:22:00.000+02:00

Complicated code is a sign that you don't understand your program well enough to make it simple.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-11-17T11:35:00.004+02:00

In allocating resources, strive to avoid disaster rather than to attain an optimum.
Butler W. Lampson, Hints for Computer System Design

2008-11-13T13:19:00.001+02:00

You'll benefit in several ways, however, by not compiling until late in the process. The main reason is that when you compile new code, an internal stopwatch starts ticking. After the first compile, you step up the pressure: "I'll get it right with just one more compile." The "Just One More Compile" syndrome leads to hasty, error-prone changes that take more time in the long run. Avoid the rush to completion by not compiling until you've convinced yourself that the routine is right.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-11-11T11:36:00.000+02:00

In defensive driving, you adopt the mind-set that you're never sure what the other drivers are going to do. That way, you make sure that if they do something dangerous you won't be hurt. You take responsibility for protecting yourself even when it might be the other driver's fault. In defensive programming, the main idea is that if a routine is passed bad data, it won't be hurt, even if the bad data is another routine's fault.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-11-06T23:37:00.001+02:00

I have never met anyone who can do Scheme, Haskell, and C pointers who can't pick up Java in two days, and create better Java code than people with five years of experience in Java, but try explaining that to the average HR drone.
Joel Spolsky, The Perils of JavaSchools

2008-11-04T12:39:00.000+02:00

Make interfaces programmatic rather than semantic when possible. Each interface consists of a programmatic part and a semantic part. The programmatic part consists of the data types and other attributes of the interface that can be enforced by the compiler. The semantic part of the interface consists of the assumptions about how the interface will be used, which cannot be enforced by the compiler. [...] Look for ways to convert semantic interface elements to programmatic interface elements by using Asserts or other techniques.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-11-03T13:01:00.002+02:00

Stay hungry, stay foolish.
The Whole Earth Catalog, 1974 edition.

2008-10-27T16:16:00.000+02:00

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
R. Buckminster Fuller

2008-10-24T12:08:00.000+03:00

Time is the resource that I must invest very carefully. If I lose money there is a chance I can earn it in future. On other hand time spent for nothing will never come back. Money graph may go up and it may come down. Time axis is always one way…
Alik Levin, Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget.

2008-10-23T13:34:00.000+03:00

Good interfaces are easy to use correctly and hard to use incorrectly. Your should strive for these characteristics in all your interfaces.
Scott Meyers. Effective C++. 3rd Edition.

2008-10-22T07:51:00.000+03:00

Voltaire said that a book is finished not when nothing more can be added but when nothing more can be taken away. In software, this is especially true because extra code has to be developed, reviewed, tested, and considered when the other code is modified.
Steve McConnell, Code Complete, Second Edition

2008-10-21T10:18:00.000+03:00

Continuous improvement is better than deferred perfection.
Probably Mark Twain's. Heard on software development conference 'Agile Summer 2008'.

Introduction

2008-10-20T12:15:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, a smart, well-formulated couple-sentence thought, like grain, is better than a verbose, full of husk, hundred-page book.
This is particularly important today, when time costs too much, to just waste it out, using with low efficiency.
So here I will collect such grains of mental work, sifted out of different books, articles and speeches, to be planted in fertile fields of software development.