Coding Process

Instructor:
 Agenda
 Coding Process
 Code Review Process
 Common Defects & Practices
 Coding Process
Where the Coding is?
 Coding Process
Coding Workflow

Start Plan

Code Library
Modules

Code Functional
Modules

Integrate Create System

Components Description

Code Functional
Finish
Modules
 Coding Process
Code Planning
 Purpose: To plan and prepare for coding
 Steps:
 Study design documents
 Define and prepare resources and infrastructure for coding,
unit test and integration, if necessary.
 Create coding plan including targets, scope, required
deliverables and acceptance criteria,
 task and schedule, responsibilities
 Review and obtain agreement on coding plan
 Develop/customize coding convention
 Review & conduct training on coding convention
 Verify tools support for coding (if any)
 Coding Process
Coding Library Modules

 Purpose: To build, construct and/or develop library

modules
 Steps:
 Create detail design for library modules
 Code library modules
 Review code of library modules
 Fix defects of library modules
 Summarize related documents
 Coding Process
Coding Functional Modules

 Purpose: To build, construct and/or develop functional

modules
 Steps:
 Create detail design for modules and program units, if
required in design documents
 Code modules and program units
 Review code
 Fix defects for modules and program units
 Summarize and submit result to Team Lead
 Coding Process
Integrate Software Modules
 Purpose: assemble the software package from the software
modules, ensure that the software package, as integrated
and functions properly
 Steps:
 Create integration plan (if needed)
 Integrate modules
 Evaluate integration results, conduct cause analysis, raise
change request (if needed)
 Review and approve results of integration
 Coding Process
Create System Description
 Purpose: To develop System Description /User Manual
documents that support in software operation
 Steps:
 Make overview on system
 Describe sub-systems and main functions including system
structure scheme, flow charts, system interfaces, data flows
 Describe system requirements including support data, memory
capability, CPU and I/O requirements, storage capability, data for
internal and external interfaces
 Describe software structure including library of source codes (for
system, sub-systems, objects) library of executive and supporting
programs
 Develop User Manual
 Review and approve System Description/User Manual
 Coding Process
Deliver & Summarize

 Purpose: To deliver software package

 Steps:
 Review, do final inspection and summarize software
products including documents
 Deliver to test team
 Create coding summary report
 Maintain documents, records
 Code Review Process
Code Review

 A thorough technical & logical line-by-line review of a

code module (program, subroutine, method, ..)
 In a code review, the team would examine a sample of
code and fixes any defects in it
 Codes is inspected to identify possible improvements and
ensure that business requirements are met.
 For example, it could be made more readable or its
performance could be improved
 Code Review Process
Review Benefits

 A different perspective
 Assess and accelerate progress
 Pride/reward: more pride,
 Project/module familiarity
 Fewer bugs and less rework,
 Better team communication
 Team cohesiveness
 Code Review Process
Review Candidates

 A portion of the software that only one person has the

expertise to maintain
 Code that implements a highly abstract or tricky
algorithm
 An object, library or API that is particularly difficult to
work with
 Code written by someone who is inexperienced or has
not written that kind of code before, or written in an
unfamiliar language
 Code which employs a new programming technique
 An area of the code that will be especially catastrophic if
there are defects
 Code Review Process
Review Workflow
Begin

Prepare for review

Conduct review

Evaluate review
results

Rework and
Following-up

End
 Code Review Process
Roles & Responsibilities
- Assisting conductor in
preparing for the review
- Joining the review
- Preparing meeting minute

- Preparing for the review (agenda,

and facilities,
affected material, checklists…)
- Submitting codes Secretary
- Gathering feedback of reviewers
project components (Optional)
- Conducting review
- Joining the review sessions
- Issuing report of the review
- Correcting review defects - Approving decisions
- Following-up
- Providing corrected codes - Reviewing to make sure all
codes of the review basing
defects are corrected
- Sending feedback upon review results
- Joining the review

Conductor Reviewer(s)
Author Approver(s)
- Assisting conductor in preparing
answer for comments/ questions
- Joining the review meeting

Project members
(Optional)
 Code Review Process
Reviewing Inputs

 Statement of objectives of the review

 Source codes to be reviewed
 Must be completed, tested by developer
 Ready for the next step in the development life
cycle (developer’s view)
 Other affected project components:
documentation, test cases, a project schedule,
or requirements changes, etc.
 Checklists to be used (optional)
 Code Review Process
Prepare for review 1/2
 Preparing agenda and facilities for
the review
 Contacting with PM/QA to identify
list of reviewers
 Sending agenda along with all
inputs to reviewers
 If a meeting is necessary, gathering
all comments /questions of
reviewers and prepare
answers/solutions for each one
 Code Review Process
Prepare for review 2/2

 Preparing notes:
 Reviews are conducted as needed, usually based on the
rate of code output.
 The frequency of individual participation in a peer review
depends primarily on the size of the programming team.
 A team of 3 developers might include all three in every review.
 Larger teams might be able to rotate participation based on
experience, skill level, subject matter familiarity, ...
 The review should include the programmer, two reviewers,
a recorder, and a leader.
 Other considerations for the size of the review team might
be the scope of the project, workload, or training needs.
 Code Review Process
Conduct Review 1/2

 Performing online review. Some questions

reviewers might bring up:
How does this module actually satisfy the stated
requirement?
How does the output affect the previously base-lined
interface documentation?
Wouldn’t a case statement work here instead of a
nested if-then-else structure?
Etc.
 Logging and sending to conductor all defects
found and comments/questions
 Code Review Process
Conduct Review 2/2
 Conducting the review meeting (if any).
 The leader opens with a short discussion of the goal of the
meeting and lays out any ground rules.
 Prioritising all defects and comments/ questions during the
meeting
 The developer goes through and explains his/her code.
 The reviewers raise, discuss on the issues, comments,
questions
 The developer addresses those issues and explains the
logic, problems, and choices that resulted in this code
 Logging all new defects or unsolved questions found
during the review meeting
 Code Review Process
Evaluate review & Follow up
Evaluating review results
 Preparing and issuing Review report
to all attendees
 Making approval or reject basing
upon the review’s results

Rework and Follow-up

 Fix code-review defects
 Monitoring to make sure all defects
are closed as planned
 If necessary, preparing for the new
review again.
 Code Review Process
Review Outputs

 Review Report: reviewer list,

defect list, statistic and
analysis…

 Filled-up checklists

 Minute of meeting (if any)

 Approval or Reject of approver

 Code Review Process
Self- Code Review 1/3

 What: developer to do self-code review while

he/she do the coding, it is to make sure that:
Requirement logics are implemented correctly
No coding conventions or common defects existed
General programming practices are applied
 How:
Use code review tools
Use team-defined code review checklist
 Code Review Process
Self- Code Review 2/3

Code Review Tools

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_static_code_a

nalysis
 .NET

 FxCop http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/bb429476%28v=vs.80%29.aspx
 Resharper http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
 StyleCop http://stylecop.codeplex.com/
 JAVA
 CheckStyle (http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/)
 C,C++
 CPPCheck http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/cppcheck/
 Code Review Process
Self- Code Review 3/3

Code Review checklist

 This is a team-defined coding checklist.

 Project developers are required to self review their codes

following defined checklist items, filled the code review

checklist as reviewing results
 Main checklist items

 General coding conventions

 Code module, class commenting
 Source code details: modulation, code structure, loop, naming
conventions, comments, etc.
 Common Defects & Practices
Hard code constants

 Issue with giving a fixed value in codes, for example:

dgrView.PageSize = 10
strErr = "Error message here";
The problem occurs when you should change these
values multiple times!!!

 Preventive Action: define constants in the common

constant module or in a configure files
 Common Defects & Practices
Array Index Start from 0

 Issue with below C-Language codes?

int i, a[10];
for (i=1; i<=10; i++) a[i] = 0;
This made the loop into an infinite loop!!!
 Cause: A C array with n elements does not
have an element with a subscript of n, as the
elements are numbered from 0 through n-1.
 Preventive: programmers coming from other
languages must be especially careful when
using arrays.
 Common Defects & Practices
The Dangling else Problem

 Issue with below C-Language codes?

if (x == 0)
if (y == 0) error();
else {
z = x + y;
f (&z);
}
Confused on the else using!!!
 Cause: else is always associated with the closest
unmatched if.
 Preventive: use appropriated braces ({)
 Common Defects & Practices
Null Pointer Exception

 Issue: the developer got Null-Pointer-Exception run-

time error, while he/she did not detect that when
compiling the codes
pPointer->member = 1;
strReturn = objDoc.SelectNodes(strName);
 Cause: the developer does not check null or think
about null object before accessing object's value.
 Preventive: Should check null before accessing object
or pointer before using its member
If ( pPointer != NULL ) pPointer->member = 1;
If (objDoc != NULL)
strReturn = objDoc.SelectNodes(strName);
 Common Defects & Practices
Detect Common Defects Sample

public bool IsValidLogin(string userName, string password) {

SqlConnection con = null;
SqlCommand cmd = null;
bool result = false;
try { Lack of checking for null value(1)
con = new SqlConnection(DB_CONNECTION);
con.Open(); SQL Injection (1)
string cmdtext = string.Format("SELECT * FROM [Users] WHERE [Account]='{0}' AND
[Password]='{1}' “, userName, password);
cmd = new SqlCommand(cmdtext);
cmd.Connection = con;
Hard code !!(1)
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; SQL Performance Issue !!(1)
result= cmd.ExecuteReader().HasRows;
cmd.Dispose();
con.Dispose();
return result;
}
catch (SqlException) { Memory leak !! (2)
return false;
}
}
 Common Defects & Practices
Programming Practices 1

 Issue with variables or create objects in Loop?

for (int i=0; i<dt.Rows.Count-1; i++)
{
string strName;
strName = dt.Rows[i]["Name"].ToString();
//do something here
}

Impact to the application performance!!!

 Cause: memory is allocated repeatedly.
 Preventive:
 Variables should be declared before the loop statement or
inside for() statement
 Determine objects before loop statement
 Common Defects & Practices
Programming Practices 2

 Code redundant issues:

 Create new Object while we can reuse the object in previous
command:
BeanXXX bean = new BeanXXX();
bean = objectYYY.getBeanXXX();
 Variables are declared in based class but it is not used
 Un-used methods/functions are existing in the application
 Break a complex method/function to more simple methods / functions
with only one or two lines of code, and could not be re-use
 Preventive actions:
 Should verify that the current design is possible and is the best by
coding sample
 Re-check unnecessary code to remove in coding review
 Supervise and assign person to review code carefully before coding
 Supervise strictly changing source code from team daily
 Common Defects & Practices
Programming Practices 3

 Avoid using an object to access a static variable or method.

Use a class name instead.

 Numerical constants (literals) should not be coded

directly, except for -1, 0, and 1, which can appear in
a for loop as counter values.
 Avoid assigning several variables to the same value in
a single statement.
fooBar.fChar = barFoo.lchar = 'c'; // AVOID!
 Common Defects & Practices
Programming Practices 4
 Do not use the assignment operator in a place
if (c++ = d++) { // AVOID!
...
}
should be written as:
if ((c++ = d++) != 0) {
...
}

 Do not use embedded assignments in an attempt to

improve run-time performance.
d = (a = b + c) + r;
 Common Defects & Practices
Programming Practices 5
 File operations: file read operations must be
restricted to a minimum
 Clear content of big structure after use: always clear()
the content of Collection/Map objects after use
 Be economical when creating new objects
 In program language that has no garbage collector (i.e
C, C++): free allocated memory after use:
{
double* A = malloc(sizeof(double)*M*N);
for(int i = 0; i < M*N; i++){
A[i] = i; memory leak: forgot to call
} free(A);
common problem in C, C++
}
 Common Defects & Practices
Programming Practices 6
 Use parentheses liberally in expressions involving mixed
operators to avoid operator precedence problems
if (a == b && c == d) // AVOID!
if ((a == b) && (c == d)) // RIGHT
 Try to make the structure of your program match the intent,
for example:
if (booleanExpression) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
should instead be written as
return booleanExpression;
Q&A