Good ways to overcomplicate your code and slow down development

[Dar Scott]

On Sep 14, 2006, at 6:48 PM, Josh Mellicker wrote:

> If you're aware of the fame and impact the 15 minute Ruby on Rails  
> demo (http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts) has had on web  
> developers, you know speed is as much, if not more, an issue as ever.

I'm not aware of that fame and impact.  I do believe speed is an issue.

I suspect our differences is that I'm not smart enough to be limited  
by typing speed.  I do want to type fast, but more so I want to grok  
fast what I typed.  I invest time in "What is the right way to look  
at this?" to keep my scripts small--I suppose that can be looked upon  
as saving typing.

I suspect we will find lots of styles.  Our brains and habits are not  
the same.  What works for one might not work for another.  Yet we can  
try out other styles and see what works.

> What do you think are the 3 (or 5 or 10) most common timewasters of  
> Rev programmers?

OK.  I'll play.  Off the top of my head real fast...

10. Final coding before research and standards checking.
9.  Final coding before staring at the wall.
8.  Spending too little time on this list.
7.  Spending too much time on this list.
6.  Writing long complicated handlers.
5.  Trying to understand last week's long complicated handlers.
4.  Skipping the testing of small functions and handlers.
3.  Making assumptions:  Revolution has no quirks.  I know what my  
customer wants.
2.  Putting values into temp variables when it does not add to  
readability.
1.  Solving any problem while it is still complicated.

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Dar Scott
Dar Scott Consulting  and  Dar's Lab

http://www.swcp.com/dsc
dsc at swcp.com

Computer programming
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