By a practice, I mean something akin to when a doctor walks into an examining room and washes their hands. It takes virtually no time, no mental effort and sometimes has a very positive impact. There are several practices of this sort that developers should also follow. What follows is a few of these. Note: we elaborate many of these in “Essential Skills for the Agile Developer” https://bit.ly/2MSq3sX the #s after the practice is the chapter number where a more in-depth discourse of the concepts involved is given.
- data should always be private (5)
- before writing code ask yourself, “how am I going to test this?” (3)
- when considering a design, ask yourself, “how would I design this if I knew however I designed it, it’d be wrong?” (5)
- when someone gives you a requirement, ask them “how will I know I’ve done that?” (3)
- encapsulate by policy, reveal by need (5)
- encapsulate constructors (2)
- separate use from creation (2)