I don’t advocate holding any one to any specific sort of rules, but I do have a general set of guidelines that I work with. Here is a simple set of helpful coding warning signs that can save you major coding accidents, and nasty refactorings down the road if you pay attention when you see them. Most of these apply generally to object oriented language, but could apply elsewhere. Without further ado, my programming yield signs.
Recursion
If you are using recursion there may be a better way, or I like to say just because it fits into recursive paradigm, it doesn’t mean it HAS to. There are many times I have found myself ending up doing something recursively, and regretting. My word of warning: “It starts with a couple of recursive functions, and then you wake up 3 days later in the middle of New Mexico in playing Russian roulette with Bill Richardson. Recursion has it’s uses, but with it you probably are going to incur a performance cost that may not be worth it.
Nesting Logic
Any time you start nesting logic beyond 1 or 2 levels this should be a warning sign that something could be a miss. This is where debugging is generally going to start getting difficult. If you are having difficulty coding a section, and it involves nesting of logic this a point where you need to step back and get a second opinion on how to do it. I am by no means saying don’t do it, but watch
Really Long Functions
Writing really long functions is generally a sign of two things, either there is a lot of logic to parse through, or you may be doing something poorly. This may also be an indicator that something else outside of your current scope is amiss. This is generally a point to ask questions, and thoughts on how to program a specific section.
Maze Like Program Flow
If you are constantly searching for functions, and logic, and your program looks like a maze this is probably a point where you should take a step back. This means that either there is some really sloppy code, or there is very high level of systematic complexity. If the complexity does not match the task you are trying to achieve this may a point to step back and take a look at the big picture, and possibly get a different perspective on the situation.
There are many other sets of guidelines, many other people have created. This a small list of warning or “yield” signs that I use regularly. This reflects my general bias for trying to make things as simple as possible, and reducing complexity where ever possible.
