Clean Coder, The: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers (Robert C. Martin Series)

by Robert C. Martin

It’s a lot easier to be a nonprofessional. Nonprofessionals don’t have to take responsibility for the job they do—they leave that to their employers. If a nonprofessional makes an error, the employer cleans up the mess. But when a professional makes a mistake, he cleans up the mess.

Testing through the GUI is always problematic unless you are testing just the GUI. The reason is that the GUI is likely to change, making the tests very fragile.

Still, every time QA finds something the development team should react in horror. They should ask themselves how it happened and take steps to prevent it in the future.

it is important to avoid committing to deadlines that we aren’t sure we can meet.

It is unprofessional to be a loner or a recluse on a team.

No system should consist of code that hasn’t been reviewed by other programmers. There are many ways to conduct code reviews; most of them are horrifically inefficient. The most efficient and effective way to review code is to collaborate in writing it.

It makes no sense to tell a programer to devote half their time to project A and the rest of their time to project B, especially when the two projects have two different project managers, different business analysts, different programmers, and different testers. How in Hell’s kitchen can you call a monstrosity like that a team?

It is time for those of us in the software industry to face the fact that guiding the next batch of software developers to maturity will fall to us, not to the universities. It’s time for us to adopt a program of apprenticeship, internship, and long-term guidance.

Dependent tests are a deep trap that you don’t want to fall into.