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Software Engineering Principles & Best Practices

The document discusses principles and best practices for clean code and defensive programming. For clean code, it recommends using intention-revealing names, organizing methods logically, refactoring complex conditional expressions, avoiding Booleans and using enums instead, and writing comments that explain why rather than what. For defensive programming, it advises validating all input data, protecting against invalid states, choosing consistent error handling, adding logging, and using exceptions judiciously. Examples show avoiding null values and returning exceptions instead of null.

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Jegan
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97 views

Software Engineering Principles & Best Practices

The document discusses principles and best practices for clean code and defensive programming. For clean code, it recommends using intention-revealing names, organizing methods logically, refactoring complex conditional expressions, avoiding Booleans and using enums instead, and writing comments that explain why rather than what. For defensive programming, it advises validating all input data, protecting against invalid states, choosing consistent error handling, adding logging, and using exceptions judiciously. Examples show avoiding null values and returning exceptions instead of null.

Uploaded by

Jegan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Software Engineering

Principles & Best Practices


Clean Code
• Use intention revealing variable and method names.
• Organize your class methods such that if A calls B, B is directly below A.
• Change complicated if expressions into function call so that it’s easier to read.
• If (( employee.flags & HOURLY_FAG) && (employee.age > 50)
• If ( employee.isEligableForRetirement() )
• Avoid passing Booleans to functions. Create meaningful two value enums instead.
• FileStream f  = File.Open (“foo.txt”, true, false);
• FileStream f = File.Open (“foo.txt”, CasingOptions.CaseSenstative, FileMode.Open);
• Create “is” methods for your enums.
• FileMode fileMode.
• If ( fileMode.isOpen() )
• Write comments about why you are doing something over writing comments about what you
are doing.
Defensive Programming
• Protect your code from invalid data
• Validate all input data
• Validate return values
• Validate limits and bounds
• Protected your code from invalid state conditions
• Choose appropriate and consistent error handling strategy
• Add diagnostic code – logging
• Use exception handling only when you need to
• Is NOT about swallowing errors or hiding bugs
AVOID - Ignoring null or invalid arguments

public void addFriendToList( List<Friend> friends,


Friend newFriend )
{
if ( friends != null && newFriend != null )
{
friends.add( newFriend );
}
}

• We will never know when friends or newFriend is null!


PRACTICE - Rejecting invalid arguments

public void addFriendToList( List<Friend>


friends, Friend
newFriend )
{
NullPointerException is
Objects.requireNonNull( friends ); thrown if friends is null
Objects.requireNonNull( newFriend );
friends.add( newFriend );
}
AVOID – Return values indicating success of failure
Rule: A runway must be either departure or arrival
public Runway getRunway( String runwayName )
{
Runway runway = arrivalRunways.getRunway( runwayName );
if ( runway == null )
{
runway = departureRunways.getRunway( runwayName );
if ( runway == null )
{ Return value must be evaluated to determine
return null; success/failure
}
}
}
return runway;
}
PRACTICE – Throwing exceptions for invalid states
public Runway getRunway( String runwayName )
{
Objects.requireNonNull( arrivalRunways );
Objects.requireNonNull( departureRunways );
Runway runway = arrivalRunways.getRunway( runwayName );
if ( runway == null )
{
runway = departureRunways.getRunway( runwayName );
if ( runway == null )
{
throw new IllegalArgumentException( "Runway " + runwayName + " does
not exist" );
}
}
return runway;
}
PRACTICE – Throwing exceptions for invalidate states

public void start()


throws JMSException
{
log.debug( "Starting" ); Invalid state condition to call start() without first
if ( isInitialized ) initializing
{
consumerLoop();
}
else
{
throw new IllegalStateException("The consumer must be
initialized before starting.");
}
}

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