{"id":10299,"date":"2022-02-17T15:02:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T15:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1380730"},"modified":"2022-02-17T15:02:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T15:02:35","slug":"following-programming-best-practices-will-slow-you-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=10299","title":{"rendered":"Following programming \u2018best practices\u2019 will slow you down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who hasn\u2019t stolen a cookie from the jar when Mom wasn\u2019t looking?<\/p>\n

Or stayed out with friends long after bedtime?<\/p>\n

Or \u2014 God forbid \u2014 taken the shortcut through the park where shady people lurk, instead of going the long way over the main road?<\/p>\n

Or, yes oh yes, which programmer hasn\u2019t violated one of those etched-in-stone best practices, you know, one of the ones that you should follow at all costs?<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say that many, if not most, of us have done this before. But maybe your rule-breaking is exactly why your code was better than average. At least it didn\u2019t make you lose your job. Or make your computer explode at runtime.<\/p>\n

Sure, breaking rules is never without risk. If you\u2019re a brain surgeon, you really should follow the rule of \u201cnever cut this piece off.\u201d (Forgive me for my bluntness, I\u2019m no medical expert.)<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re building software, what\u2019s the worst case? Sure, if you\u2019re designing killer drones or software for electric grids or support systems for spaceships you might want to go slow and follow the rules.<\/p>\n

But those programmers who don\u2019t have high stakes like that \u2014 and that\u2019s most of us \u2014 you might want to question your rulebook from time to time.<\/p>\n

Copy-pasting code isn\u2019t the root of all evil<\/h2>\n

The die-hard open-sourcers<\/a> and the die-hard purists<\/a> may argue otherwise. But, in all earnesty, who hasn\u2019t copy-pasted code snippets from StackOverflow and other places of the big wide internet?<\/p>\n

First of all, if you have a problem that takes five seconds to google, you wouldn\u2019t go annoy your coworker for ten minutes to make them fix it. And if the answer is on Stack, then, well, the answer is there.<\/p>\n

The purists would argue that you shouldn\u2019t copy anything because you might not understand what\u2019s going on in the copied code. And they have a point.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re googling around anyway, you\u2019re quite likely going to check the manual pages of the function that you\u2019re copying over anyway. Plus, you\u2019re probably going to need to adjust a few variable names and understand where to put that snippet of code. That\u2019s not possible without a minimum of understanding.<\/p>\n

Another point for the purists is that your ready-to-copy-paste code may contain non-printable characters. These are characters like a backspace or a horizontal tab that you can\u2019t see on your screen, but that can have an effect on the output anyway.<\/p>\n

Purists would therefore argue that if you\u2019re going to copy code, at least type it yourself so you don\u2019t accidentally copy non-printable characters and make a mess of your project.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s cool advice, but personally I don\u2019t know anyone who has ever bumped into a non-printable character<\/a> and messed up their code. I do know someone, though, who introduces typos everywhere: me.<\/p>\n

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<\/i><\/a>Some bugs you\u2019ll never see with a naked eye. Image by author<\/figcaption>