This blog isn’t about some perfectly balanced programming practice. I don’t think that exists. Different situations call for a different emphasis. I want to talk about how to balance programming. How to think about what you want to achieve and how to pick the choose guidelines accordingly. How to decide when to follow a rule and when to put it aside.
I graduated university in the late 1990s and have been working with software ever since. Mostly of that time has been spent in small teams, as part of small to medium sized companies. I’ve written a lot of new code but also worked with a lot of existing code. This often involves revising and improving code to make it more consistent, smaller and more understandable. More recently I’ve spent time thinking how to organise the processes as well as the code itself.
My primary development languages have been C++ and C# with a few others mixed in. Most recently it’s been C++ with a bit of python for scripting. For the moment any examples are likely to use C++ but the principals will probably apply to other languages.
At the start the schedule was a couple of posts a week, normally Tuesday and Thursday. I’m busier now so it’ll only be once a week for now. I’m going to keep future options open as well.