On Coding Style

CS 300 Lecture 3.1

Bart Massey 2013-10-15

Overview

• Misc notes
• Pseudocode Concluded
• Basics of Routine Construction

Misc Notes

• Today's CSOD is http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Who-Knows-Code.aspx.

Pseudocode Concluded

(In-class pseudocoding demo.)

Principles Of Routines

Overall principles:

• Routines come from design

  • Not too little functionality
  • Not too much functionality

• Routine interfaces should be narrow and understandable

• Routines come with preconditions and postconditions

• Routines should be coherent

Principles Of Routine Construction

• Construction should be from pseudocode

• Invariants should strengthen down the page

  • Handle corner cases first, then general case

• Control flow should be as simple as possible

• Optimization must not be a concern during construction

• Maximal use of idiom

  • Flag all "surprising" code with comments

Book Example: A Bad Routine

• I disagree with only a couple of critiques

• I wish I could say I never see anything like this IRL

• If you don't pick a standard coding style for your language, I will not even look at your code

  • Indentation
  • Whitespace

Let's Read Some Code

(Examination of my Ricochet Robots solver.)