Twelve Ways to Make Code Suck Less by Venkat Subramaniam

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We all have seen our share of bad code and some really good code as well. What are some of the common anti patterns that seem to be recurring over and over in code that sucks? By learning about these code smells and avoiding them, we can greatly help make our code better.
Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston. He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.
Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at [e-mail] or on twitter at @venkat_s
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[@bulatgabidullin3209]

2:43 Schedule time to lower technical debt 8:55 Favor high cohesion 10:39 Favor loose coupling 13:30 Program with intention 16:04 Avoid primitive obsession 24:38 Prefer clear code over clever code 28:10 Apply Zinsser’s principle on writing 31:30 Comment why, not what 35:34 Avoid long methods - apply SLAP 38:35 Give good meaningful names 46:18 Do tactical code reviews 51:01 Reduce state and state mutation

[@karthikraghunathan3363]

don't know why this isn't the top voted comment

[@munishmisra169]

Years of experience in an hour with flawless presentation skill. Thanks Venkat.

[@janardhancv1127]

wow! This is professional! Very Inspiring! Thanks Venkat for the great thoughts.

[@monk3ification]

Absolutely amazing talk! This is one of the best talks on code quality that I've ever seen!

[@sujittripathy84]

This is amazing presentation. Thank you Venkat for all your thoughts.

[@naranzala5867]

I've started following your videos and thoughts. Thank you so much for this wonderful knowledge tranfer..

[@amitev]

It's a pleasure to listen to him!

[@orlovskyconsultinggbr2849]

Another great talk from Venkat! Such treasure.

[@bartoszbilicki2673]

Excellent presentation.

[@alexlaverty8564]

These videos are awesome, please make more

[@kamillatosinski3054]

Even I know most of the principles this is still extrimly entartaining to watch!

[@ThibaudVibes]

It's me or Mr Subramaniam is on stage without shoes ? Anyway this is a very inspiring talk. Thanks.

[@anshulabhinav13]

yeah, he has this habit of walking the stage in his socks :)

[@SagirAnsari-bn7oj]

In indian culture without shoes shows more respect to audience and I am Indian

[@crabsynth3480]

@@SagirAnsari-bn7oj i dont think theres any respect in not wearing shoes for the audience... no offence... im also indian... and i think its just more comfortable to walk around the stage in socks when ur giving a 1-2 hour talk.

[@dineshjangra563]

@@crabsynth3480 I disagree, even my professor used to remove slippers/shoes before going onto the stage/platform in class to teach, not because of comfort but due to traditions & respect.

[@karthikraghunathan3363]

yes, his shoes are typically injected at runtime

[@Berke-Khan]

great speech

[@JaihindhReddy]

He's right about GRE.

[@hasnainabbasdilawar8832]

I wish this guy was my teacher

[@ranjithsekar1950]

Comment why, not what... super

[@McDerpDerp]

Those jeans mean you are amazing at computers. One love.

[@JakobRobert00]

I think it a very nice presentation with useful knowledge provided, but at 18:55 i actually think the code is a bad example. The task is formulated very confusingly, I did at first not even understand what the purpose of this function should be. And the errors he does on purpose are very obvious. Everyone should see immediately that it does not make any sense to check for count < 0 if you initialize it with 0.

[@SasiKumarNHS]

I have tested both "Imperative Style" and "Functional Style" example being given in the video and it seems imperative looks pretty hard to understand and Functional style looks good and easy. But the problem is Functional style take little more amount of time than the imperative style. Does that makes the impact? Can some on suggest on this?

[@Pedro-qy1fl]

He made another presentation about functional coding: /watch?v=I4wuMV8N6Iw

[@johnnyshoes3708]

#1 is questionable. If you implement High Cohesion, then you implement MCV / MVP / MVVM, and one of the first things you do is write getters/setters for the Model. So, straight off the bat, before you've implemented behaviour, you've written a tonne of state information.right?

[@dkypa]

You're Vivekananda of programming.. Thanks Venkat..

[@bhaaratsharma6023]

I wanted to have his opinion on problem at 18:00 before Java 8 was out.

[@mailmahee]

you mention a lot of problems in depth... it would be great if you can elaborate on solutions as well in the same depth

[@adamsn06]

What IDE/editor is he using?

[@vishalbhangui2047]

It's TextMate!

[@tsequeira2912]

The hard-copy www.agiledeveloper.com/presentations/twelve_ways_to_make_code_suck_less.pdf

[@supericool]

Where are this guys's shoes?

[@karthikraghunathan3363]

they'll only be injected in at run-time

[@CrapE_DM]

Lol, someone said thought Venkat looked normal.

[@timonix2]

sometimes, you comment bad code instead of fixing it due to time constraints. You comment because you know that someone is going to have to come back here later and that poor sod shouldn't have to start solving some code sudoku from scratch.

[@_SG_1]

Sprinkled with functional programming and immutability zealotry.

[@karthikraghunathan3363]

National Off-By-1 Error Day !!!! at 19:00

[@bayraminanc885]

I think OOP sucks

[@holothuroid9111]

Venkat is really great programmer, as a trained historian, his idea on the beginning of agriculture, I must say, is naive at best.

[@twanus2657]

méh

[@johnnyshoes3708]

Mr Venkat we need this bit of functionality, how long will it take? Venkat "1 month", What? surely, it can be written in a day? Venkat "my code is quality, I need 2 weeks to think of good variable names, 1 day to write it, and 9 days to factor it ( I mean, to free it from Technical Debt)" Screw that, give it to the temp guy, he's a crap programmer, but, he'll get it done in a day!