Talk:Coding best practices

Old comment

The article is full of sweeping generalizations, non-sequturs, and contoversial advice presented as fact. It is amusing that it is accidentally correct in saying that the practices described have "incredible" (i.e not credible) value.

This page gets into lifecycle, requirements, etc. best practices. But the title is *Coding* best practices.

Also, many of the best practices listed for requirements, architecture, etc. aren't necessarily best practices. For example, Extreme Programming disagrees with them, yet is a very valid methodology. DRogers 17:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Criticism of Article content and tone.

As an informative article, I feel the article's casual and possibly lecturing tone detriments from the value or emphasis of the article. In certain places, (e.g a quick Google search will turn up...) the information source is vaguely hinted at.

As such, the article fails to

1. give a reasonably complete overall picture of coding conventions, 
2. link users to related topics, 
3. introduce them to related keywords and categories for the people looking for more in-depth information.

I feel that the format given below is more suited for

The format: Meaning of 'Best coding Practices', what do they refer to, not refer to.

What are the categories/conventions which are generally accepted as BCP?

No one set of practises. Situation specific.
Brief discussion of possible aims - ease and speed of development, less bugs, speed, stability, portability etc,
and how compromises are made on the priority of aims.
 Based on Language - General and specific coding conventions e.g. hungarian notation, 
 Based on desired results, who the end-user is, what his requirements are.

How does this translate into an approach at each level, e.g.

pre- and post- contracts for writing a procedural function, 
OOP based class-design, 
Design Patterns for local class-interactions, 
Modular approaches (Test driven development)
Implementational approaches (extreme programming)

Discussion of studies/recommendations/preferences of eminent figures in the industry.

Peer Review

Article seems to suggest that Peer Review means looking at other people's code to see what's the best way to do things. That's not what peer review means at all. Rather it means having other people look at your work, to identify any problems in your own code. --duncan (talk) 09:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Unclear article

This article is in serious need of a cleanup. As it stands, it is incomplete, suggestive and even misleading. I'd almost prefer it to be deleted as it requires complete rewrite anyway. -- mafutrct (talk) 13:57, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite

This article is badly written and off topic. I was looking for a conclustion to coding dilema myself but will have a go at rewriting this article instead.

The title "Coding Practices" would be more appropriate with a section on "Best coding practices".

This article currently seems to be a vague, inaccurate, inexperienced and personal view on project development.

This article should really be covering the use of comments and layouts in code, naming convention of variables, methods etc, use of switches/ifs, the differences these changes have in a range of languages and the choices to be made based on the situation in hand. SkeaterMedia (talk) 07:16, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

The article contains no mention of logging or use of libraries, both of which I consider crucial coding practices. Bartonski (talk) 06:20, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have started rewriting this article, taking note of the various criticisms mentioned above. I fully intend to include lots of inline references.

Please check my work, add more references, etc. as I progress. Murray Langton (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, some progress has been made:

• Rearrangement of topics to provide a more logical grouping.
• Rewrite of first two sections (Software quality, Prerequisites), with a fair number of quotes and inline references.

The remaining sections have still to be considered. Any suggestions for this or for sections not yet mentioned are welcome. Murray Langton (talk) 22:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Removal

This article is a farce. It just needs to be deleted, not rewritten. There's absolutely no need for an article entitled "best coding practices" in an encyclopedia. Even the title is a joke. Please delete this embarrasment of an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.176.129 (talk) 17:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Somewhat agree, there no new ideas. There too many outside links. Also there better written and maintained page on almost same topic: Software quality Ushkin N (talk) 07:38, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Agree, this feels like a blogpost.Scoaldr (talk) 05:40, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Assertions

There is no discussion of the use of assertions. Assertions are a really useful tool to help debug programs. For example, at the JPL, one of their coding rules is that a certain percentage of the lines of code (I think about 8%) have to be assertions. It's easy to find a reference for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:280:4201:D47F:D45E:D915:C74:3BF2 (talk) 17:06, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

version control?

is it appropriate to mention version control here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:308B:1E00:CC09:4A50:74D5:AAA3 (talk) 07:49, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi, it is, as part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_coding_practices#Deployment or configuration management (versions and variants)

Resolved

--𝔏92934923525 (talk) 00:52, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

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