SDN Blogs: No. It's the ultimate test!

Weblog: Great Programmers will their Code to the New Guy

Subject: No. It's the ultimate test!

Date: 2009-07-03 02:54:05

From: Thorsten Franz Business Card

Response to: No. It's the ultimate test!

Hi Uwe,
Why do you think this developer would fall into my definition of brilliant? Did you mean the ironic definition at the beginning of my blog?
What I'm trying to say in this little article is that the best programmers write the most easily understood programs, so maintaining a program written by someone who is a good programmer in my book should not lead to a headache.
I share your opinion that naming conventions are important for transparency. The help you see the smaller software modularization more clearly (I'm in a method - what is a parameter, what is a local variable, what is an attribute of the class or object? What is a reference, a structure, etc?) as well as see the larger structures (Which package, application, software layer, software component, type of development object, etc. does this belong to?).
Personally I like SAP's ABAP naming conventions and established style quite well because they work for me: They enable me to read the code fluently and see the larger software structures, framework architectures, etc. very quickly.
To sum it up, I think there are two aspects of a software that make it easy to maintain for others:
1) First of all, the structure of the software can be inherently simple. This is a matter of analysis and design as described in the blog: Did the designer manage to reduce an apparent complex domain to a much simpler model that actually works and covers the domain's phenomena well in the same way a simple formula in physics might explain and model a host of different real-world phenomena.
2) Secondly, the software communicates its own structure by means of being more or less explicit, adhering to naming conventions, containing comments, meaningful names for classes, methods, variables, etc.
I didn't cover the second aspect in my blog but I think it's equally important.
Best regards,
Thorsten

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Weblog:	Great Programmers will their Code to the New Guy
Subject:	No. It's the ultimate test!
Date:	2009-07-03 02:54:05
From:	Thorsten Franz Business Card
Response to: No. It's the ultimate test!

Hi Uwe, Why do you think this developer would fall into my definition of brilliant? Did you mean the ironic definition at the beginning of my blog? What I'm trying to say in this little article is that the best programmers write the most easily understood programs, so maintaining a program written by someone who is a good programmer in my book should not lead to a headache. I share your opinion that naming conventions are important for transparency. The help you see the smaller software modularization more clearly (I'm in a method - what is a parameter, what is a local variable, what is an attribute of the class or object? What is a reference, a structure, etc?) as well as see the larger structures (Which package, application, software layer, software component, type of development object, etc. does this belong to?). Personally I like SAP's ABAP naming conventions and established style quite well because they work for me: They enable me to read the code fluently and see the larger software structures, framework architectures, etc. very quickly. To sum it up, I think there are two aspects of a software that make it easy to maintain for others: 1) First of all, the structure of the software can be inherently simple. This is a matter of analysis and design as described in the blog: Did the designer manage to reduce an apparent complex domain to a much simpler model that actually works and covers the domain's phenomena well in the same way a simple formula in physics might explain and model a host of different real-world phenomena. 2) Secondly, the software communicates its own structure by means of being more or less explicit, adhering to naming conventions, containing comments, meaningful names for classes, methods, variables, etc. I didn't cover the second aspect in my blog but I think it's equally important. Best regards, Thorsten