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Coding Practices I Love To Hate

I’ve been writing software long enough to have developed a few opinions. Many of the practices and patterns that I have encountered have been great! Some have taken me down a dark, winding path. Here are a few that I find more bittersweet.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

I am a huge proponent of TDD. It has saved my bacon a number of times, and has surely saved me hundreds of hours of troubleshooting and re-factoring.

What I Love About It

  • My boss and team members like the higher test coverage
  • Easier to communicate test cases and test plan ideas to QA
  • Better idea about work remaining to complete a feature
  • Greater confidence in re-factoring, since I know my tests will catch most bugs I might introduce

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Determinism in Dispose and Finalize Execution Timing

I get a surprising number of questions about when objects are disposed or collected. Usually people will have some limited logic to cleanup their objects (releasing file handles, removing references to large objects, etc.), and they don’t know when this logic will execute. Here is a little bit of insight into when objects are disposed and finalized. (If you are looking for more information about Disposable and Finalizable patterns, check this post)

When Does Dispose Execute?

The Dispose method on an object is only executed when it is called by the application. What I mean by that, is the CLR does not automatically call Dispose on your objects. If you don’t call dispose, it can result in a memory leak that does not get cleaned up until the process exits.

This doesn’t mean you necessarily have to call Dispose() explicitly. In C#, there are a number of times that Dispose() is called implicitly:
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Be Kind to Your GC: Examining IDisposable and Finalize Patterns

Through my discussions with various developers, I have noticed a common theme when it comes to disposing objects. Most developers are confused, or at least unclear, on why and when to use dispose and finalize.

Let me start off with this: The purpose of dispose and finalize is the same… to improve the performance of the application and the host system. You don’t need to implement either. When the GC runs, unused managed memory will be reclaimed. When your process exits, the entire process’s virtual memory will be released. When the system re-boots, any open native handles will be closed. Dispose and finalize are two patterns that make it easier for your application to be a “good citizen,” releasing memory as soon as it is no longer needed and closing handles as soon as you are done with them.
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Automatic Memory Management Concepts in .NET (Garbage Collection)

As Raymond Chen so aptly explained, the purpose of garbage collection is to simulate a computer with an infinite amount of memory. This is another piece of the puzzle that gives application developers freedom through abstraction. Freedom to focus on the logic and structure of their code without being unnecessarily concerned about the constraints of the system it is running on, including managing physical and virtual memory. Unfortunately, this seems to result in some gross misuse of system resources.

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Strict Mode in JavaScript

JavaScript strict mode tells the interpreter to be more particular about what is allowed. In general terms, strict mode makes your code a little safer by turning some bad coding practices into exceptions.

For existing code, this is good and bad. It’s good, because it helps you find some potential bugs, like accidental globals. It’s bad because code that used to work, might now be broken.

Here’s the kicker: for new code, it is almost always good.
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Property Descriptors in JavaScript

Some of the most common complaints about JavaScript come from its dynamic, mutable nature. You can modify nearly any member of any object and even delete some built-in ones! This enables web developers to improve cross-browser compatibility of their sites while maintaining code readability with a technique called poly-filling. On the other hand, it also allows developers to modify built-in behavior (called “monkey-patching”), sometimes causing side-effects or bugs that are difficult to troubleshoot.

Starting in ECMAScript 5, new mechanisms have been defined to give you (the developer) the ability to restrict what can be done to your object members. You can read the standard here. I did. Twice.
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Private Variables in JavaScript

Because JavaScript uses prototype-based inheritance, there is no keyword to define a member as “private” or “protected”. Either the object has a member, or it doesn’t, and you can access that member from anywhere you can access the object. Do not despair! There is a way to implement private variables… using another feature of the language: closures!

Closures

Closures are fairly simple, but frequently misunderstood. What you need to know for now, is that a closure allows you to reference an outer variable from within a function, even when the function is called from another context.

This will make more sense when you see some code.Read More »Private Variables in JavaScript

Inheritance in JavaScript

Native JavaScript inheritance is prototypical. For one, this means that you don’t inherit from classes, you inherit from objects. You don’t define classes and instantiate them. Instead, you create objects and use them as a “prototype” or “base” for your own object instances.

In JavaScript, this is facilitated with the mechanisms called “prototype” and “constructor”.
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Useful JavaScript Features You Aren’t Using

JavaScript is one of the most widely used and misunderstood programming languages in existence. Nearly every personal computer and mobile device in the world can interpret it, and nearly every developer (and non-developer) that has made a website has written it, some without knowing it!

If you call yourself a JavaScript developer, then here are some things that the language can do that you need to know about, whether you use them or not! If you are using them, then you should understand them!
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Anti-Pattern and Code Smell Defined

I had pretty much assumed that nearly all software developers would know what I mean when I use the words anti-pattern and code smell. Over the last couple of months, I have come to the conclusion that this is not strictly true.

What is an anti-pattern?

When asking this question, I have received a number of different responses. Everyone seems to have a basic understanding, but most don’t have any clearer idea than “it’s bad code.”

To understand what an anti-pattern is, you must first know what a pattern is.
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