Generative AI Solutions
November 22, 2023
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Software development and testing is an arduous endeavor. Despite your best efforts, a lot can go wrong. Hence, it is necessary to follow software development and testing best practices to mitigate risks inherent to such intricate projects.
Here are the software development and testing best practices that you should follow:
Code Coherence
For code coherence, following a consistent style guide is imperative. The uniform style will help to make the code easy to understand, upgrade and maintain. If you can tell who wrote the code, then the style guide is not being followed.
To follow a style guide consistently and to keep your code coherent, you can make use of certain tools for example, Javascript style checker, Editorconfig and ESLint. These are popular tools that are highly configurable and thus enjoy widespread use.
Regular Testing
Test driven development might appear to be rather demanding but the truth is that it will save you a lot of trouble in the long term. Since you are testing frequently and regularly, you will catch out potential problems much earlier and thus remediate them in time before they become any bigger. Failing to spot these problems in time could mean much more rework which entails the risk of missing the deadline.
With regular testing, you will have much greater confidence in your source code and can mitigate the risk of unexpected problems that require a lot of rework.
Strong Communication Channel
Collaboration between the development team and clients is necessary to deliver according to expectations. Software development methodologies such as agile development call for client approval at the end of every project milestone. The advantage of this approach is that at all important phases of development, you can rest assured that your work resonates with the client. After all, the project is being done for their satisfaction. Hence, it pays to afford top priority to client satisfaction. For this to happen, it is necessary to maintain an open communication channel. Doing so will help you to improve code quality and fulfill all client requirements.
Simplicity
Software is one of the most intricate creations to exist. It is not unusual for software to run into millions of lines of source code. To reduce the enormous complexity inherent to code, you should strive for simplicity. Try to use the most straightforward methods to arrive at the same results. Make an effort to avoid redundancy and repeated lines of code as far as possible. All efforts that go into simplifying code will yield plenty of benefits in the long term as your code will be much easier to work with, upgrade, update and maintain. Pay close attention to software development principles like YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It) and DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). Giving due regard to code simplicity is paramount for bringing down its massive complexity.
Reviews
Prior to reaching out to the client for approval at the end of each project milestone, you should have the code thoroughly reviewed and tested. The workflow for software development should include processes for reviews and testing. Catching out imperfections and deficiencies before the client points them out can help you to polish your code and thus improve client satisfaction.
Project Management
It is tempting to set highly ambitious deadlines for the project and have them done on the tightest budget possible. But it is better to be realistic and to factor in unexpected hindrances.
Your client may be initially pleased with the short development time that you promised them. However, if you don’t deliver within the mentioned time frame then this could lead to dissatisfaction even if code quality is good. You should never promise what you are not certain of delivering. Even if you can deliver within a very short deadline, there could be problems with code quality as you may have to curtail testing and other key processes to complete within the due date.
You should also set a realistic budget by anticipating the time and cost that you expect will be incurred during development. A major benefit of setting realistic budgets and deadlines is that the project team will not be under undue pressure. They can avoid excessive stress and work to the best of their abilities when they have a reasonable amount of time at their disposal to deliver the goods.
There is no doubt that estimating time frames and budgets is not easy due to the numerous known and unknown variables. However, you can improve with experience.
Be Careful With Code Comments
Code comments are the most important part of source code even though they are not compiled and executed as part of the source code. Comments are of paramount importance since they can help others to understand your work quickly, easily and thoroughly. Thus, you should make an extra effort to ensure that your comments are comprehensive yet succinct. They should be accurate and easy to comprehend.
The problem with hastily written comments is that they could be inaccurate or misleading. Thus, instead of being helpful, they might turn out to be problematic. The whole point of comments is to alleviate problems and not exacerbate them. Giving due regard to comments will provide good returns in the future since any further upgrade, troubleshooting or development will be much easier.
Use Caution
When writing code, try to adopt a conservative approach. Stick to those methods that you know are tried and tested. Do not try out new things as this could lead to unexpected problems. Write defensively and try to pick out problems in advance so that they can be remediated before they transpire. Being extra scrupulous while writing code can help you and your team avoid much bigger problems down the road. With experience you will get better at this and catch more problems before they go out of control.
For example, you can try entering invalid input values to find out if anything will go wrong.
Conclusion
Software development and testing best practices can put your coding endeavor on the right track, help you to complete within the deadline, fulfill all client requirements and brighten prospects of project success. Hence, you should implement these best practices in your coding workflow.
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