In programming, “good practices” are the name given to working methods that have been proven and that developers are expected to know and apply. This involves improving the quality of the code, speeding up its writing, but also using techniques that facilitate proofreading by people outside the project. If the “good practices” of software engineering are constantly evolving, those presented in this document form a base on which most computer scientists agree.
What the user wants
The starting point of a project is based on the specifications given by the client, ideally in the most precise way possible. These specifications can be based on a scenario illustrating how the user of the program will understand its interface and manipulate the data. Some so-called “agile” working methods focus on this type of scenario by studying user stories to clarify customer needs. These same working methods allow specifications to evolve in order to be improved; this is how a method like “Scrum »Allows work to be divided into development cycles in which the customer is closely associated. The specifications cover both the functional part of the project (how are the data modified?) And the non-functional part: which platform hosts the project? In what environment is the project used? Does performance matter? What constraints does the security of the project impose? What is the life cycle of the project? Who will maintain it? From the user’s point of view, the finished product must therefore combine efficiency with ergonomics, power with reliability. How can Magento developers reconcile such conflicting requirements by covering all customer-specified needs and considering user stories to improve the use of the finished product?And what the developer can do:
Fortunately, the developer is helped in his task by a whole series of “good practices” born from the experience acquired since the beginnings of IT. Thus, writing the code can be done in many ways, Extreme Programming going so far as to recommend writing the code in pairs. But once written, code is meant to be proofread, either because that proofreading is part of the quality process, or because another developer will need to modify or understand it. Respecting certain conventions is therefore essential. It is thus accepted that the development language must be English, both for the code and for its documentation. This is to facilitate communication within the community of developers but also to encourage them to read and understand other people’s code: English is therefore used today as the language of communication. As an example, LibreOffice undertook a major “cleanup” of the Open Office code in order to remove comments written in German which slowed down the code review. The latter must also be written respecting conventions facilitating its writing and reading. Once the programming language has been set, the names of functions and variables will be written in English (egg “.reset ()”), respecting the alternation of lower and upper case letters. A widely used convention thus consists in naming a function printing a PDF “.printed ()” or “.Printed ()” rather than “print pdf ()”, in fact less readable. The organization of the code responds to various constraints but the central element remains the principle of “object-oriented programming”. This involves dividing the project into abstract objects (“classes”) containing data on the one hand, and functions on the other hand which allow this data to be handled. The OOP helps give a clearer picture of the code and help protect data against unauthorized changes called “edge effects”. Thus, rather than directly modifying a variable named “image”, it may be interesting to place the image in a class and add .get Image () and .set Image () functions which alone will allow it to be modified. The code of a project is nowadays kept on a server acting as a “project manager” and incrementally recording the changes made to the project. This project manager can be assisted by a server ensuring “continuous integration” and operating a battery of tests intended to automatically check the consistency of the project. These tests are very varied (performance tests, unit tests, functional tests,) but their effectiveness also depends on the way in which they cover the code. Here again, software can help website design in Auckland developers identify untested or undocumented functions. Indeed, the quality of maintenance depends directly on that of the documentation. This can be generated with the help of specialized software, such as Sphinx, ensuring its consistency and formatting. The quality of documentation can be governed by standards; for example it is possible to decide that the comments must form such or such proportion of the total mass of the code of a file. The companies that apply these methods are looking for ever greater quality for their project and seek to integrate recommendations that are also valid for the tools with which they work. This is the case with Magento (e-commerce, e-marketing) which applies such methods by making them coexist harmoniously with software such as Magento and Drupal .There are therefore many “good practices” and it is tempting to summarize them by means of a few major principles which have proved their worth. Let us mention two: KISS (Keep it Simple) and DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), the first making it possible not to overly complicate writing the code, the second ensuring that nothing redundant is written. Respecting good practices is therefore only apparently restrictive for developers: in addition to improving the quality of their work, these practices should above all make their lives easier! Visit-: Remittance Sol
