This post was originally published on kaapedev.wordpress.com.
The old blog is no longer actively maintained, but I’d still like to keep my old articles about game development with Xbox Live Indie Games.
Recently I stumbled upon a book that I bought for my bachelor thesis, but didn’t manage to read until now: Clean Code by Robert C. Martin. A new understanding of the Software Engineering craftsmanship is based on this book, called the Clean Code Developer. It’s full of principles and tips to understand the difference between clean and dirty code and thereby write better code. Although I don’t want to make a career as a Software Engineer (that’s way to hard for me), it’s handy to know the quality difference, for example when it comes to reviewing the work of suppliers. There won’t follow a summary of the book, as there are already tons of good reviews. I just want to point out one thing that caught my interest in particular, Kent Beck’s four rules of Simple Design:
- Runs all the tests
- Contains no duplication
- Expresses the intent of the programmer
- Minimizes the number of classes and methods
Test Driven Development isn’t something new, but these rules are so simple and plain reasonable, that it’s a shame if one disregards them. As I am currently developing a lot, I will try to follow these guidelines and review my work against them more consciously.