Class 23: Coding Style

Held Monday, October 28, 2002

Summary

Today we take a detour to discuss programming style.

Notes

• Break was productive, but less productive than I'd hoped for.
  • I've graded phase 1 of the project (and we'll discuss it a little bit), but not your written assignments.
  • Yes, those of you who turned in HW1 or HW2 can hold me to my grading promise, but I'll still evaluate those homeworks eventually.
  • I did work on a sample lexer, which I'll make available tomorrow (after I fix some of the comments that I can't fix from home).
• There are two cool talks on The Enigma (code breaking in WWII) tonight at 7:30 in Science 1023 and tomorrow at 4:15 ni Science 2424. Extra credit for attending!
• Are there questions on phase 2 of the project?
  • Tomorrow's lab may give you some ideas.

Overview

• The problems with The Hammer Strategy
• Comments
  • General strategies
  • Javadoc
• Code formatting
• Coding strategies

Notes on Phase 1: Lexer

• Be careful about the hammer strategy.
• Please use more comments (using Javadoc when appropriate).
  • At the start of each class, giving purpose, authors, etc.
  • At the strat of each method, giving purpose, requirements, special values, etc.
  • Inside your methods, explaining any strange strategies.
• Please document your overall strategy (preferably near the top of your primary file).
• Think about (and document) how others will use your class.
• Build testing procedures!
• Be careful about maintaining abstraction barriers.
• Try to stick to one of the standard techniques for formatting your code. (I'll show you a few that I or others prefer.)
• Beware of include x.y.* (for reasons I'll explain).