Whenever you’re reading books or watching presentations on management, two names are bound to show up.
Month: September 2009
Code Conventions
Like revision control, fresh graduates are introduced to the foreign concept of code conventions (or “coding standards”) once they enter professional software teams. As implied by the term, “code conventions” are a set of standards and guidelines that developers have to follow when coding in their software project.
Contrary to what many people think, code conventions are not there simply to make code style consistent throughout large projects with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Nor is it simply an unnecessary tool used by senior developers to assert their control over the project that only complicates coding.
In fact, properly defined code conventions help manage complexity.
Pareto Principle
In the next few posts, I’ll be posting about other fundamentals that I have missed so that we could move on to better stuff (i.e. stuff that not everyone knows) by the time I reach the 100 post mark.
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The Pareto Principle (also known by many names e.g. Law of the Vital Few, 80/20 Principle, etc.) is a widely observed phenomenon wherein 80% of the effects come from only 20% of the causes.