Good Code, Bad Code (1 ed)

Good Code, Bad Code: Think like a software engineer

Practical techniques for writing code that is robust, reliable, and easy for team members to understand and adapt.

Summary

In Good Code, Bad Code, you’ll learn how to:

• Think about code like an effective software engineer
• Write functions that read like well-structured sentences
• Ensure code is reliable and bug-free
• Effectively unit test code
• Identify code that can cause problems and improve it
• Write code that is reusable and adaptable to new requirements
• Improve your medium and long-term productivity
• Save yourself and your team time

The difference between good code and bad code often comes down to how you apply the established practices of the software development community. In Good Code, Bad Code, you’ll learn how to boost your productivity and effectiveness with code development insights normally only learned through careful mentorship and hundreds of code reviews.

Table of Contents

PART 1 IN THEORY
1 Code Quality
2 Layers of abstraction
3 Other engineers and code contracts
4 Errors
PART 2 IN PRACTICE
5 Make code readable
6 Avoid surprises
7 Make code hard to misuse
8 Make code modular
9 Make code reusable and generalizable
PART 3 UNIT TESTING
10 Unit testing principles
11 Unit testing practices