Good Code, Bad Code

Book excerpt: Practical techniques for writing code that is robust, reliable, and easy for team members to understand and adapt. Summary In Good Code, Bad Code you’ll learn how to: Think about code like an effective software engineer Write functions that read like well-structured sentences Ensure code is reliable and bug free Effectively unit test code Identify code that can cause problems and improve it Write code that is reusable and adaptable to new requirements Improve your medium and long-term productivity Save yourself and your team time The difference between good code or bad code often comes down to how you apply the established practices of the software development community. In Good Code, Bad Code you’ll learn how to boost your productivity and effectiveness with code development insights normally only learned through careful mentorship and hundreds of code reviews. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Software development is a team sport. For an application to succeed, your code needs to be robust and easy for others to understand, maintain, and adapt. Whether you’re working on an enterprise team, contributing to an open source project, or bootstrapping a startup, it pays to know the difference between good code and bad code. About the book Good Code, Bad Code is a clear, practical introduction to writing code that’s a snap to read, apply, and remember. With dozens of instantly-useful techniques, you’ll find coding insights that normally take years of experience to master. In this fast-paced guide, Google software engineer Tom Long teaches you a host of rules to apply, along with advice on when to break them! What's inside Write functions that read like sentences Ensure your code stays bug-free How to sniff out bad code Save time for yourself and your team About the reader For coders early in their careers who are familiar with an object-oriented language, such as Java or C#. About the author Tom Long is a software engineer at Google where he works as a tech lead. Among other tasks, he regularly mentors new software engineers in professional coding best practices. Table of Contents PART 1 IN THEORY 1 Code quality 2 Layers of abstraction 3 Other engineers and code contracts 4 Errors PART 2 IN PRACTICE 5 Make code readable 6 Avoid surprises 7 Make code hard to misuse 8 Make code modular 9 Make code reusable and generalizable PART 3 UNIT TESTING 10 Unit testing principles 11 Unit testing practices