For the tech professionals who endeavor to become a better programmer, there are great ways to boost your productivity and enhance your code.
To ensure an outstanding performance and deliver great productivity, developers can always follow a few consummate steps and improve their programming skills. In this article, I will offer you a list of best practices that can help you stay ahead of your competitors. By adhering to these tips, not only you will be able to augment your programming skills and speed, but you will also be able to ensure a quality code.
Let’s distill an array of useful tips that can add to your programming skills.
1. Keep your basics clear
The programming language that you are working on is highly important. Thus, it is crucial that understand all the ins and outs associated with the language. Once the basics will be clear, you can efficiently accomplish even the complex tasks by clearly analyzing the problem.
2. Stay updated with the latest trend
To stay ahead of the curve, it is always essential to possess the up-to-the-minute knowledge about the platform that you deal with. In fact, if you exhibit the knowledge about the latest updates of other platforms as well that would be an added advantage.
This is quite essential because, IT is a burgeoning industry that keeps flourishing persistently. Indubitably, both the mobile industry and web industry are blooming at a great pace, thus, to stay in demand, it is imperative to stay updated with the latest technology, latest market trends (design trends as well as development trends) and so forth. This will ultimately help possess the requisite skills that are in high demand. There are several helpful resources available on the Internet that can help you stay updated with the latest technologies, and trends across the globe.
3. Create and follow a thorough implementation model
Sketching an implementation plan beforehand can always help streamline the program layout. While working on a simple and small task, it may correspond to a simple flow chart or equation. However, for complex and larger tasks, the implementation model can help create segments of the main job into smaller modules. While working on complex tasks, it is advisable to consider the task for each module, flow of data between modules, and the implementation of data within each module.
One might think that planning is a bit tedious job, but it can surely save your valuable effort and time by avoiding a slew of bugs. For this reason, it is always recommended to spend some time for planning and gathering requirements. Moreover, with a design flow, you may spot a better way to accomplish the job.
4. Keep simplicity at its best
Foreseeing the future aspects is a good approach, but considering what will be there after a few years is not a good idea. This will not only make the code complex, but due to the uncertainty of the future expectations, you may end up wasting your time and effort. However, ensuring simplicity doesn’t imply a quick and dirty layout. It must be well structured and legible, so that if ever it is reviewed in the future, it can be easily comprehended. For this, it is better to integrate comments in the code and format the code in an appropriate fashion. This will also help make it amenable to change, (if ever it is required after some time).
5. While creating a function
To ensure a simple, legible and rich functions, they must be programmed while taking a few key aspects into account. Like, prefer a concise and precise structure of a function to attain a desired task. Black boxes are often helpful, as there is less dependency on anything else except their parameters, thus, they are able to proficiently manage any possible input. It is advisable to restrict your function length to 10 lines as and when possible, if it exceeds, one must work over it to make it simple. Furthermore, for better readability, it is better to encapsulate the repeated code segments into a separate function.
6. Code testing is advisable
Testing is another essential aspect of programming that can help determine the bugs and uncertainties in a program. Therefore, it is advisable to kick around and thoroughly test each module. While testing, one must check the results for three kinds of values, including extremes, incorrect values, and absurd values.
7. Reap the benefits of the Pair Programming method
This prolific approach helps improve the coding skills and deliver outstanding performance. It is a great way to work on programming if you are working in a team, as it offers a fabulous way to share knowledge within a team. If a novice developer will sit next to an expert developer, the junior will certainly be able to learn more efficiently. However, this strategy has proven to be beneficial only if a learner practically implements the skills, otherwise, it would be of no use.
8. Avoid unnecessarily throwing exceptions while coding
By throwing extraneous exceptions in a program, the code becomes bulkier and slower. Therefore, it is advisable to use minimal exceptions, and only when it is imperative.
9. Join forums and help others
Whether you have certain queries or have a zeal to help others, joining forums can help become a better programmer. This is because, by helping or teaching others, you can certainly improve your programming skills. There is no dearth of technical forums on the Internet like Stack Overflow, Quora, and more. You can join any suitable one, and post your queries and seek appropriate solutions or answer other posts with a suitable solution.
10. Get your hands on IDE, before diving into programming
There are numerous IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) available out there that support different programming languages. It is essential to kick around beforehand and determine upon which you can work comfortably. Before beginning the project, it is better to understand all the integrated features, as, it will help boost your productivity and smoothly accomplish the task.
11. Work as a professional
While commencing a task as a professional programmer, you can better tackle with the code complexity. Since, professionals are responsible for their workmanship, schedule commitment and several other factors, they make strive to ensure a remarkable end result with minimal possible loopholes. While working as a professional, you will be liable for any gain or loss associated with your work, thus, it is paramount to ensure an updated knowledge base. Programmers are paid by employers to deliver a top quality result and, therefore, it is the programmer’s duty to make efforts to stay up-to-the-minute with the trends and technology. By doing so, they will be able to implement an appropriate approach in an efficient fashion.
Professional programmers try hard to make sure that the Quality Assurance team find nothing wrong with their product. However, the job of a QA is to seek loopholes in the program code or its functionality, but developers are expected to deliver their code only when they are sure about their job. Thus, to ensure that the end product works smoothly, it is good to work as a team in harmony. Help each other and teach each other to generate a flawless product. The smaller the bug list would be, the better the development would be. Projects with a bulky bug list represents negligence, however, it is acceptable in the case of big systems, but not in other projects.
12. Get the code reviewed by the team
When more programmers are involved in developing a project, it often delivers a valuable outcome. However, if only a single developer is taking care of a project, it not only augments the dependency on that particular programmer, but there is also a probability that he might have overlooked something. To avoid such situations, it is always better to work in a team and get the code reviewed by the entire team. This way, you can handle your project quality and ensure a collective ownership of the developed code. If you have already considered the pair programming approach, additional code reviews are not required.
13. Implement indentation for readable structure
To indicate the control flow in a program, it would be worthy to implement the indentation while programming. The code is indented with single tab within a bracketed block. This is further implemented with an additional “switch” structure, “if” structure, “for” structure or “while” structure. Whether there is an inline statement without brackets or a block of multiple statements with brackets, it must be indented. However, it is better to line up the else statements for a corresponding if statement.
14. Don’t forget “Practice makes a man perfect”
Practicing something always helps improve the performance. Since, programming is not a stagnant discipline, it is advisable to practice as much as you can to become an efficient and better programmer. This will boost your speed and help deliver remarkable code. This is not a short term effort, but one must practice consistently to stay in touch will old as well as latest technologies. Practicing will certainly improve the thought process, and problem solving skills. Furthermore, by knowing the basics, one can instantly work on it and accomplish the task.
These are a few of the noteworthy tips that can help you enhance your coding and problem-solving skills, and thus, become a better programmer. Wisely adhere to the aforementioned tips and you will definitely observe an augmented performance.