Writing Quality Software: A Primer

Writing Quality Software: A Primer

"Okay, so you have a respectable handle on syntax, and you are proud of yourself for getting that far. And, truth be told, you should be. But, knowing syntax is not the same as mastering syntax in such a way that builds quick, efficient web software. This article takes a look at not just writing software, but writing quality software."

Discuss the article in this thread. You can read the article here .

I guess I've spent too many years coding, read too many books, and gotten way too tired of poorly written examples by authors with very little coding experience. Hence, I'm more than a little sensitive to errors, and I'm quickly turned off when I catch them.
I could gloss over things like "States[$x]" (missing the dollar sign in front of "States"), and missing semi-colons, but a loop "from 0 to 50" that loops through all "50" states was too much for me to bear (actually loops through 51 -- 0 through 50).
It isn't that the article was rendered useless, it is that I am reminded of a C++ class I taught once, where the book chosen for the class was so fraught with programming errors, I had to tell the class that they should ignore the examples in the book to avoid endless eye strain, trying to reconcile the compiler's demands with the syntax presented in the book.
I know the article was essentially about coding practice; not really coding, but, after 20 years as a professional coder, I've wasted a lot of time listening to lectures by people who had no practical coding experience and who were bent on improving my coding technique. Thus, I have no patience for inexperienced coders telling me (after I've written over 1,000,000 lines of production code), how to write quality code when they can't even quality check their own examples.

Otherwise, the article contained useful tips, inasmuch as I read of it.

djtoltz:

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of an editing team behind me reading the content that I write, so bone head mistakes always seem to slip in. I'm especially disappointed that I never caught my classic for loop mistake, which does loop 51 times instead of 50.

Regarding the missing semicolons, that wasn't the point of the article, but I should still have placed them in their appropriate places.