High-quality programs have easy-to-read and understandable code, they can be easily extended, they work well with other software, and their support doesn’t turn into a nightmare. Code quality should not be compromised; the use of quick but sloppy decisions due to a tight deadline, excessive excitement, agitation, irritation, etc. is unacceptable.
One of the most important aspects of software development is designing an expandable product from scratch. Modifying apps after they’ve been released is a fact to come to terms with. Users will need more and more functionality, they will want to make it even easier to use the application.
An application component is usually not very useful on its own. Software benefits begin when multiple components interact with each other, exchange data, and work together to present data and interfaces to users.
And with this in mind, you need to develop programs. What messages does the software accept? What events does it track? What messages does it give? How are data transmission authenticated and authorized?
Another important aspect of writing good programs is clear code, not the number of tests or the number in the code coverage report. Everything is simple here. Think: Can others read the code? Or, even better, if you write the code today, can you figure it out a few weeks later?
“In computer technology, there are only two difficult tasks: invalidating the cache and coming up with names.”
– Phil Carlton
The readability of your code is much more important than it might seem. Unfortunately, there are no convenient indicators for assessing this characteristic. It can be helpful to remember proven programming techniques and patterns, but this is often not enough. A good developer with experience just develops an intuition that tells you how readable the code is. Here’s a good comparison: it’s not enough to have a large vocabulary to write concise text.
“I didn’t have time to write a shorter letter.”
– Blaise Pascal
With any program, at some point, something will definitely go wrong. The main feature of good software is the ability to easily fix an already released program. If the program generates an error during operation, there should be a clear message about this, which will be centrally recorded somewhere – so that errors can be tracked. When a new error is reported, the person responsible for fixing it should be able to debug, connect to the system at any time and get information about the execution context, and also check the expected behavior of any system component.
