Programming, Coding, Programming Languages, What Languages to Learn, Writing Code, Writing Software, Coding in “C”, July 25, 2018

Thoughts
* Coding is Communication - Steve Gibson on why he carefully comments code
* If I write some code in Lua, and if I am careful, I might be able to share it between Codea and the Mac
* Pythonista, I can write portable Python code that will execute the same on Mac, Linux, Windows, IOS and Android
* Small Subroutines! Very small.
* Some of my best programs have used very small subroutines with good default rules.
* Some people say that 2 lines are too much in a subroutine.
* Its hard to verify a function that is 20 lines, let alone 100. Small 5 to 10 line programs.
* Sometimes, you do need to write something as one big “thought”, but then you should go back and break it into little pieces.
* "Our Documentation is like your Documentation, except that ours compiles." -- Dan Sabo
* This makes one authoritative source for documentation.
* Sometimes when the problems seems overwhelmingly difficult the solution is to attack it a very small chunk at a time.
* Dan's Theory on how to make re-usable software - "Find some software and re-use it."
* Commenting code should not be the focus, making the code readable, understandable, is the thing I need to do.
* Do more with less code and in less time
* Good code seems to be the union of minimizing the number of lines in a subroutine and minimizing the number of API calls.
* When you see big loops and bit flags, that should be a warning
* Programming is like exercise, you have to do it everyday to be good at it.
* Solving problems in programming
* Often you have to get rid of the problems you know about and then see what is left
* I don’t think many are going to agree with me, but I think I write my best code when I use the artistic method. It’s like carving a statue, you step back and look at it and think, I don’t like this part, and you work on that for a while and step back and look at it again.
* I do like the Agile Manifesto
* I think the Agile Manifesto conflicts with Scrum
* I still enjoy coding
* Attention to detail
* I want to write as much as I can in a safe stateless way
* I want to write as much as I can in a thread safe way

Languages to Learn
* I need to make a IOS app
* I think Python Tkinter is the right thing to learn
* Python, PythonQt is portable across Windows, Linux and Mac
Python can be Byte Compiled into a standalone executable
* Python Tkinter comes with most of the default installations, Linux, Mac, Raspberry Pi
* Haskell
• Lua


Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming

* Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is.

* Rule 2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

* Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)

* Rule 4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.

* Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force.". Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS. Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Rule 5 is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects”.


Dan’s Rules

* A theme related to my "When you delete code you are doing God's work" meme.  And Dan's zeroth law of writing reusable code.
* If you want reusable code, find some code and reuse it.

Might quibble in a few places but he has a lot of good nuggets that I plan to steal.


http://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/write-code-that-is-easy-to-delete-not-easy-to


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