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I have a Java Project I have been working hard on for about 6 months (3 months hardcore) and it is around 8000 lines of code... However I have gotten much better then I was 6 months ago, and I have multiple classes that are full of messy, unorganized, and uncommented code.
Although my new code is much better, I often find myself lost when looking at some of my older code. Do you think it is worth the time to rewrite about 4000-5000 ish lines of code, that I think are not written well? I do not have much time to work, only about 3 hours a day max.
I don't know if I should accept that my old code was old, and just continue on, or if I should go back, completely rewrite most of my program and then have a easier path in the future. Or maybe there is a different solution? Any thoughts? Thanks! I really appreciate the help because currently I don't know if I should proceed knowing I may be just wasting time.
Yes!
Having been in the same position (more than once sadly) I can say that it is well worth it - if you come back to one of your projects in 6 months time - you'll look at that old code and wonder what the heck you were trying to do. Also, you may want to send examples of your work to prospective employers at some point, and if they look at code which is sloppy - it doesnt look good. Worse yet, if they look at the code and see two wildly different styles (sloppy vs neat) they will think you plagiarised the code.
You will also (most likely) find that rewriting those 4k lines of code, results in far fewer lines of code. Or, that it results in code that is far more reusable. Try to think about DRY when you recode (dont repeat yourself) if you use something more than once, make it a function or a class.
Also, you will save LOTS of time in the future when you come to extend/change your work.
Sure go for the rewrite. You are still learning and probably learned a lot since you first started. Now that you know more about programming and have a better idea of what the software requirements are you can probably make it much better.
Having said that, this is just a project for fun. In the business world, you would have to consider the time it takes to do a rewrite in terms of money spent and time and money wasted not adding new features etc and compare that with the amount of money wasted trying to maintain the old system to keep it running. Only if it's cheaper overall to do a rewrite will most businesses go for it.
It may be very beneficial as the other posters have mentioned. You should take this opportunity to write JUnit tests for all your new code (if you're not already doing so), as this will help you write well-encapsulated and decoupled code. Two really good books for reference are Refactoring by Martin Fowler (http://martinfowler.com/books/refactoring.html), and Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers (http://www.amazon.ca/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052).
Have fun!
This is a common question asked by many developers, and it leads to other more important questions that will aid you on your journey to become a better programmer.
Ask yourself:
do i use javadocs in my code?
do i often repeat code?
do i use established patterns and stick with them for the entire project?
The reason i ask is that the answer to these questions will effect how readable your new code will be in the future even if you do rewrite your code.
A good excercise that will prove very useful in the real world is: can i optimize the existing code without rewriting it? this is a much sort after skill if ever you were to program professionally.
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I'm fairly new to Java but love it so far. My question is, i'm a little unfamiliar with Classes. I know what they are, and generally how to work with them as I'm not brand new to programming, but I would like a professionals opinion.
I'm currently writing a small multi threading program to launch parallel power shell sessions by spawning cmdlines for target machines in a csv, capture the output and write to a csv.
Should I put everything into one class and breakup the logical operations to methods within the class and string them together? Or should I make a Thread executor class, cmdline powershell class, a csv operations class, etc (My thought behind that was to allow code reuse, but that'll be kindove time consuming and in my mind impractical since i'd have to specify the datatypes and return types for new situations in the future).
Any help would be appreciated!
There is no "way" so to speak,
It's all your preference.
But just don't cram everything into one class.
Generally, you want to be as neat as possible.
In the future, you will thank yourself for using different classes.
If your project grows, and a bug is born, you don't want to be looking through one very long class, but instead simple broken up pieces.
Let's say you have these classes:
GPS,
Main,
Search
And someone reports a bug with the GPS not working.
Instead of looking everywhere saying, where did I put the GPS code,
it's right in front of your eyes!
I've went to everyones links and found the info very helpful. So far I've come up with this.
Make a package that contains classes that perform a specific set of tasks (also don't make utility kits that are very general). The package in my case would be called com.jt.threads.powershell or something.
Keep classes small and breakup the program by conceptual types. (ie. data reading and writing operations on a filesystem should be in one class with the focus on helping the package perform a certain task or range of tasks.)
Methods within classes should focus on getting, setting, changing the objects attributes or adding logic.
The program entry point should join it all together, except in the case of large applications, in which case an interface should be used (still learning about them).
With true OOP, i don't think it's a good idea to create code for reuse, unless it's supporting a range of very very very similar tasks (that way if I have to change something, it won't break other classes outside of the package).
Thank you all! I feel a lot better knowing that I'm on the right track. I was worried that by NOT making code reusable in a lot of situations that I was doing something wrong. I started programming in Python 6 months ago for my job, but I totally ignored classes and I want to have good programming habits and apply OOP as best I can going forward! Python is definitely convenient and a great starter language, but I wish I learnt Java first so I can get a solid grasp on OOP.
There is no “The way” to organize or group classes. Anything goes as long as it works as expected and you understand what you write.
As a Programmer you only need to,
1. Know and understand what you write.
2. Know and understand what other Programmer as written.
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My team uses Scrum and we have code review (using Fisheye crucible), but from my observation working together for 2 years is that they care less about good code quality.
I am trying to learn code quality from reading Clean Code, and try to apply things I learn in code and by giving code review. I also had one sharing session on Clean code with my team and hoped that we all follow a good coding standard. Except me and another guy in the team, the rest are not interested in good coding practice nor the term Clean code at all.
I sense a great conflict during code review if I am the one who review my team mate's code. The is one guy that making the conflicts are so badly which I am getting tired of reviewing his code now, eventually I try to avoid a heated discussion that leads to nowhere.
Below are several examples in the my review for his code:
Asking him to create a variable with meaningful name for a magic number that was randomly put in code.
Asking to remove hard-coded values.
Asking to remove duplicate codes (for a particular business logic) in almost everywhere in one class, by asking him to create a method for those duplicate code instead (this time he commented in my code review that: "I could not do it because of this and that, why don't you just do it instead of asking me?" I told him I am a reviewer and not an author of the code and as per our standard the reviewer should not modify the code as she/he likes.)
He used static variables a lot, without any particular reasons. Even in unit tests, public static variables are declared many in the test classes. So I reviewed and put my comment asking to remove static variables instead; or if it is really needed then I suggest to have a #AfterClass method to destroy static variables when not being used (I said it's good for GC). He commented back, kind of: "Having these static variables won't cause any problems to GC for just running unit tests. Why he has to care for GC in unit tests?" and refused to change. My initial intention was that not only in unit tests, but also in production code too that we should not declare static variables as whatever we want.
His method is generally very long, contains of different logic putting in one method. Similar to one unit test method, generally just have two unit tests: one for failed case and one for successful case. So the failure conditions are all putting in one method and the rest are for successful case being put into one method. So when I reviewed, I asked for splitting each possible business logic for testing in one smaller method, and he refused to do so a few times.
My questions are:
I think he gets offended or I get him wrong?
Is there any of above examples I gave wrong comments?
Did I step on wrong line that I really offended him without me knowing?
When you have similar situation for 2 years without getting code review process improved, what would you do?
I tend to avoid reviewing his code and instead work on other stuffs on the board. Is that okay?
I do care for code quality as much as I can within my knowledge, it's a way to maintain a good product and also help myself to learn and improve technically. But getting into heated discussions and sometimes I feel annoyed for his comments are something I wish to avoid. But avoiding this situation for long is not a good solution I think.
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I was asked this question in an interview.Please provide the solution if you know about this thing.Is there any difference between
for(int i=0;i<=N;i++)
and
for(int i=N;i>=0;i--)
which runs faster and why?
PS: Please differentiate on the basis of performance and the way compiler takes it.I am not asking about the basic difference between postfix and prefix notation.
I think this has the potential to become a better question, if we had more info. You should specify what language you are referring to. If this is JavaScript or something else then you need to mention that.
Secondly, consider revising your question. I suggest asking under which situations one is more appropriate than the other.
Whatever the language, the difference between the two is a stark contrast. The first for-loop involves incrementing a variable until a maximum value is reached (metaphorically-speaking, kind of like a race to the top), while the second involves decrementing a variable until a certain minimum is reached (like a race to the bottom).
Incidentally, in some languages, such as PHP performance is faster in a loop increment expression if you write the increment or decrement operators on the left instead of on the right.
This is an excellent interview question because any answer you give is likely to be wrong and more importantly be something you never previously thought seriously about.
The whole point is to throw you off your game. They want to see how you react when you're pushed into an area that you feel like you should be expert in yet find something about which you are not. Knowing the perfect answer to this question doesn't help you because they'll have 12 more questions lined up to throw you off.
What they want is to see how you respond to this situation. Do you make stuff up? Do you think about it carefully? Can you justify why it's not an important concern? Do you insist your way of looking at it is the only valid way? Do you listen when told of another way? Are you a pain to deal with if told to do it another way?
They will care so much more about the answers to this than whether or not you can save them a CPU clock tick.
But if it turns out you are an expert in this one dusty arcane corner you might earn a point.
If that is your real question then it's a duplicate of this question: Which of these pieces of code is faster in Java?
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I have just finished a 2D game in Java that I've been working on for a while.
I found that on some computers it runs fine, and on others (which are not particularly slow in general), the game runs a little slower, and with minor interruptions every second or so. Not completely smooth.
Since I am a beginner to making games, and probably since I didn't plan everything about the game in advance, the code of the game is rather long, clumsy and probably inefficient.
I want to improve this in my next projects. So my question is - In general, what would be the main causes for a common 2D game to slow down on a computer?
What should I pay the most attention to, next time, in order to design an efficient game?
Making a small amount of classes? (Even if the classes are small
ones?)
Avoiding repetition of code? (Even small sections of code, such as
short if statements).
Avoiding too many threads running?
Anything else?
Obviously, all of the above are recommended for an efficient program.
But I'd like to know, what in a game's code, could be especially significant for making an efficient application, and what would be less important and will not save significant amounts of memory.
Any advice would be welcome - could be regarding game design, or regarding more specific coding issues.
I don't know if this matters, but please note that I'm talking mainly about real-time games, using a 'game-loop' that constantly updates the game and the dispaly.
The important thing when trying to improve the performance of any program, not just a game, is - don't guess.
If I or anyone says "it's in your collection classes", or "it's in your rendering", or "it's in your memory management", or "it's in your compiler optimization", can you trust it?
Short answer - No - because it's a guess.
It could be true. It could be false. Nobody knows, in your case.
People who say instead of guessing "Use a profiler" are on the right track.
In my opinion there's an even better method, spelled out here.
If you need to know why, I'll explain it further, but the hard part for any programmer is to stop trying to think it out, and let the tool tell you what to look at.
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If you read other people's source code, how do you approach the code? What patterns are you looking for (datatypes, loops, use of control flow, ... )? How long can you read other people's code without getting bored? What is the most exciting patterns that you have discovered so far?
At first, I ignore the urge to change the code. Which is sometimes hard to do. But understanding first and change later saves yourself a lot of nasty "learning experiences."
Next if the format is bad, reformat. Use a code formatter if you have one. This is because you tend to look at the indentation and if that is bad, your understanding of the code is also questionable.
Then, if there are complex datastructures, I like to draw a little diagram. The challenge here is keep it as simple as possible. Large diagrams are fun on the wall, but most of the time, they are to cumbersome to look at. So it is wasted time.
If you finally understand what a piece of code does, write a comment. This is essential, because else you won't understand it the next time you are here.
The following step is to create unit tests. Now you can not only test the code, but you can also test your understanding of the code.
Last, if you understand it al and you know it can (and need to be) better, change it. But be sure to run the tests. Unless you are paid by each solved bug.
A hip new term for this is Code Spelunking.
Aside from the obvious "work from the top down" general approach, it depends on why I'm reading it: code review, trying to understand a bit of avaialable code to adapt for my own use, trying to learn a new technique, etc.
It also depends heavily on the language. If it is an OOPL, I'll probably do something like this:
Look first for the primary class relationships and try to understand the primary responsibility of each class.
Look at the interactions between classes to see how they collaborate.
Look at the interfaces of the key classes to see what "services" they offer their collaborators.
Look inside the non-trivial methods if it's important to understand how they are working instead of what they are responsible for.
thanks, if I understand correctly, first step is to identify the context, second identify API's, and place the API's in context. I just realize it is a bit like looking at a building or piece of art, you could focus on the material used, or the function of parts, try different perspectives, judge how parts fit in the whole... there is a nice piece of the process of discovery: here - how mathematicans think
It all depends on what type of code you are reading. Is it a web app, a service, a desktop app? When I do start reading other's code I usually start looking for design patterns used. Or for the framework-specific things. But again this is if you are doing a review. If you are reading for your own interest and to learn something there really is no answer - you should read and understand the code thoroughly.
Pick an item you understand in the final product and see how it is put together. If you've got the unit tests then they are a great help.