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Software Development Axioms, 2nd Edition

Simple Rules for Higher Quality

John "g$" Gmutza

The software landscape is more crowed than ever! New frameworks seem to arrive weekly.  There are tons of books out there about mastering specific frameworks, but here is one to help you master the one constant factor, no matter where you are:  constructing the source code.

Build great things in any programming notation; the rules are inside...

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About

About

About the Book

Welcome to the Second Edition of this book!

These axioms, when followed diligently,

  • applies no matter what language/framework you are in,
  • improves quality,
  • becomes deploy-friendly,
  • provides fewer and shorter troubleshooting events!

If you are a student of software, this is all the stuff they should be teaching you, but aren't!

I have been building large-scale systems for over 30 years, and ultimately, a small number of simple rules deliver higher quality implementations. The software I build runs factories in real time, and unhandled exceptions are not an option! Neither is constantly restarting applications; I have direct evidence that my apps run for literally months without shutting them down!

Using care up-front pays back handsomely with fewer and shorter troubleshooting events.

Face it: those who maintain and deploy systems (and their users) we "throw over the wall" don't have the time or inclination to deal with "mysterious" failures that leave logs filled with cryptic stack dumps, or worse yet, little or no trace at all.

It's in our power to put an end to their pain. Dig in, and Level Up!

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Computers and Programming.NETJavaJavaScriptSoftwareDatabasesSoftware Architecture

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Author

About the Author

John "g$" Gmutza

Software developer of over 30 years, currently working with Managed Code environments (C#, Java, JavaScript).

Seen things come and go, mostly go....

Contents

Table of Contents

Preface

  1. Second Edition
  2. About the Cover

Software Development Axioms

  1. Terms of Endearment
  2. Axiom
  3. Dogma
  4. Habit
  5. Introducing the Axioms to a Codebase
  6. Be Lazy
  7. What’s Next?

That One’s A “True”

The Egg

Closing Safely

Rube Goldberg 3.0

Unmanaged Code Considered Harmful

No Wonder Software Works Like Shit!

Are You Using Threads for Everything Yet?

Service Container is the Best Thing Since Timesliced Bread

Tales From The Factory

Using Annotations in an IoC Protocol

Code Without Tests is Like a Life Without Sunshine

Don’t Float Away

A Journey into the Depths of Hell, aka Interop

If I See Another NullPointerException I’m Gonna Yak!

PSA For Control Structures

Protect Your Code From “Joey”

Axioms: Input Validation

  1. Trust No One
  2. Help Others
  3. Say Something Righteous!
  4. Special CLR Section
  5. Special Javascript Section
  6. Defense in Depth
  7. Summary

Axioms: Naming

  1. Length
  2. Renaming

Axioms: Guarantee of non-NULL

  1. Collections
  2. Object-oriented Programming

Axioms: Immutability and Deep Protection

  1. Instances
  2. Collections
  3. Collection Elements

Axioms: Caller Controls Context

  1. Technique
  2. Special .NET Section

Axioms: Error Propagation

  1. Grrrr, Fire Bad!!!
  2. Top-Level Contexts
  3. Don’t make Decisions for the Caller
  4. Don’t Strip Information
  5. Fucking and Punching

Axioms: Error Control

  1. Foreign Code
  2. Logging
  3. Special Java Section
  4. Special IDE Section
  5. Resources and Error Control
  6. Another IDE Epic Fail
  7. Reducing Burden
  8. Special Java Section
  9. Don’t Catch NullPointerException
  10. Visual Aid

Axioms: Intra-function Organization

  1. Formatting and Whitespace
  2. Documentation Comments
  3. Size
  4. Fail Fast
  5. Data Flow
  6. One Line, One Statement

Axioms: Handling Resources

  1. Using Resources
  2. Accepting Resources
  3. RAII Bye Bye
  4. File Names
  5. Other Resources
  6. Format Your Way out of a Paper Bag

Axioms: Lifecycle

  1. Lifecycle Start
  2. Lifecycle Stop
  3. Duals

Axioms: Taint

  1. NULL is Taint
  2. unsigned is Taint
  3. IDisposable/AutoCloseable is Taint
  4. Special .NET Section: async/await is Taint

Axioms: Multi-threading

  1. Debugging
  2. Data flow
  3. Sharing
  4. Thread-safety
  5. Use Platform Tools
  6. The UI Thread

Axioms: Writing Tests

  1. Prototyping the Design
  2. Positive and Negative
  3. More Greek than Italian
  4. Three from Column A
  5. Tests are Code Too

Axioms: Troubleshooting

  1. Home Sweet Debugger
  2. Playing Away
  3. Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig
  4. Special .NET Section: TraceSwitch

Axioms: SQL

  1. Not String Processing
  2. Use Parameter Markers
  3. Use Configuration
  4. Dynamic WHERE
  5. Stored Procedures Suck at Dynamic SQL
  6. SQL Is Code Too!
  7. Don’t Rewrite History

Axioms: XML

  1. Use High-level Tooling
  2. Use Writer Tooling
  3. Use DOM Tooling
  4. Use XSL Transforms

List of Axioms

Epilogue

  1. Second Edition Epilogue

Contributors

About the Contributors

Haley Gmutza

Jim Clack

Tim Hooker

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