Best Practices in Rev development

[Devin Asay]

On Jun 20, 2007, at 8:59 PM, Kay C Lan wrote:

> Devin although I know your after 'Coding Best Practices' along the  
> lines of
> naming objects and variables with meaningful names, and using  
> prefixes for
> local/global/constants, then if you're compiling a list of tips for
> debugging (assuming you don't use explicitVars)
>
> Step through your script with the Variable Watcher open
>
> 1) Are there two variables that are almost identical
>   lMyColourVariable and lMyColorVariable
>
> 2) Have I used gMyColour where I should have used lMyColour or  
> pMyColour
>
> Having eliminated these two common errors (for me anyway) it pretty  
> well
> only leaves an error in the algorithm logic - which of course is  
> the fun
> part of tweaking code to get the right algorithm.

These are great suggestions. I'll include them when I talk about  
debugging in my class.

<snip> Some details about switching from nested if/then/else to  
switch structures.</snip>
>
> Since then, for any conditional statements, unless I know 110% that  
> the
> condition will NEVER be anything other than 2 options, Yes/No,  
> Right/Wrong
> then I ALWAYS use Switch.

<snip> more details </snip>
>
> I tend to use your 3 line rule, in that if the statements in the  
> case exceed
> 3 lines I'll write a separate handler. As such, the switch  
> structures appear
> very concise and very logical (to me) as to what they do and why.
>
> I don't suggest a Best Practice for Switch statements, but if you  
> can help
> get the 'penny to drop' I think they can really help in keeping code
> readable, manageable and best of all, very easily extensible.

I agree. After about three else clauses an if/then/else structure  
starts to look pretty messy. I'm warming more and more to switch as  
time goes on. At three conditions I start to consider whether switch  
might be more appropriate than if/then/else.

Regards,

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University