Good Programming Practices

1
Good Programming Practices

• rules every programmer should know and follow.

2
Documentation

• Comment your code such that it is clear what you
  code does
• You should be able to figure out your code years
  after its written
• A good programmer should be able to figure out
  what your code does from your comments.
• Scheme comments start with
• this is a comment
• this is another comment

3
Documenting a procedure

• Include
• A description of what the procedure does
• Type of arguments -gt type of return value
• Constraints that need to be satisfied by
  arguments (requires clause)
• Expected state of computation at key states
• You should also include notes on what a
  particular chunk of code does if it may be
  confusing to a reader.

4
Documenting a procedure

• Example

5
Documenting an ADT

• Whenever you make an ADT, you should include some
  comments giving an overview of the ADT
• You should describe each sub-unit of the ADT,
  including the type of the sub-unit

6
Documenting an ADT

• Example

7
Debugging Using Test Cases

• Whenever you make a procedure, you should write
  tests for it.
• Test the procedure on limits of legal values
• Test the procedure with arguments that span legal
  values
• Include a comment with each test case indicating
  what you are testing

8
Debugging Useful techniques

• Sometimes, you can use display or print to print
  out values of your variables at key stages of
  computation
• Useful for isolating problem spots
• In Dr. Scheme, debugger is useful for checking
  values of variable in the middle of a computation.