The colorful title reflects that this posting is about common mistakes done by good but relatively inexperienced software developers. Big mistakes that a developer actually need quite some skills to make. Mistakes that we unfortunately see all too often and we would rather not see much of again (hopefully this blog entry can aid a bit towards that goal):
- Overly complicated design – Instead of a simple design for a simple project some developers insist on using a impracticable mix of all the newest, fanciest abstractions, design patterns, techniques and advanced language constructs that can possibly be combined in one software solution. All design elements have benefits and drawbacks. Great (experienced) developers know when a particular benefit of an abstraction, pattern, technique or feature outweighs the drawbacks. There is no silver bullet. No design element works well in all situations (just as no rules that you learned in “programming school” are in fact absolute). Developers that get way too eager ends up with one big unmaintainable design mess with the combined drawbacks of all decisions but few if any real benefits remaining…. Remember, a simple design is a beautiful design!
- Writing too much code – Writing lengthily code with a high maintenance cost by hand when writing such code can be avoided. Much code can be avoided by choosing a more suitable design/architecture, using standard framework/library features (xml serialization is a common example), using techniques such as dynamic reflection or specialized code generation and aspect oriented tools (be careful though).
- Reinventing the wheel – Some developers think they can write their own code much faster than learning to understand the underlying framework and available libraries. This might in some cases even be true, but when considering overall quality and maintainability (which developers seldom do) reinventing the wheel is almost always a bad idea.
- Incorrect use of advanced concepts such as multithreading – Some developers use multithreading without the discipline and deep understanding that writing correct, safe multi-threaded code requires. Multithreading can improve the user experience immensely. It is also the answer to scalability nowadays. However, before even considering to use multithreading in your design, make sure to know the theory and features in your environment well. A vague recollection of mutexes and semaphores from school is not good enough. You should also realize that by deciding to use multithreading, you generally need to upgrade on testing, documentation, reviews and quality insurance.
mmc