Andrew Liverod, SD Developer

In this series of articles I’ll try to examine what a new developer needs to know in order to either learn web development or start their first job in the industry. So to start here is the ten commandments of web development; at least according to me (it would be nice if they occasionally referred to me as God at work but I’m sure it’s just because they realise I’m an atheist and would be offended – at least that’s what I keep telling myself). Here we go…

1) Commit to subversion (or whatever version control system you use) at least once a day, at the end of the day.

Version control is vital to the operation of a company, for example, what happens if you are off sick did you commit your latest changes to that important project that launches today? Plus the drive that holds the code repositories is usually backed up each night (they are backed up aren’t they?), unlike your c: drive.

2) Comment your code. If someone else needs to take over your project there’s nothing worse than code that makes no sense. Try to comment the beginning of functions, classes, conditionals and loops. I’m well aware that perfect code should technically be self-documenting – but good commenting is your safety net when perfection eludes you!

3) Keep your functions short. If a function does more than one thing then spilt it into two functions. Simple really. In all your code think concise but legible.

4) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours ox. Um… Do not over nest! If there is one way to make code illegible (apart from the ternary operator) it’s multi-nested conditionals: if () { if () {if () { if () {. It makes your head spin and makes the code much harder to maintain.

5) Learn regular expressions. I know at first sight they look gibberish but trust me they make life so much easier.

6) Check the documentation. I’m always amazed how many functions that I’ve written already exist in the chosen language! PHP seems to be notorious for this (as well as transposing the arguments of similar functions).

7) Don’t reinvent the wheel but don’t stop improving its roundness. I hope that makes some sort of sense. Why write code that already exists somewhere. Unfortunately, some code leaves a lot to be desired, so take the code, study it and amend it to be more efficient, more elegant or to make the coffee for you as well and returning a white noise generated random number.

Use the right tools for the right job. Don’t just dismiss a language or a technology out of some code monkey bigotry.  Flashy stuff is good sometimes.

9) Get used to changing projects several times a day. I started out in application development where one project could take a several years. Lets say it was a little shock to discover that I’d need to work on several projects at the same time as well as work orders and bug fixing. It’s hard at first but gets easier especially if you organise. Write a list each day and be prepared to change it.

10) Learn to make the tea. For some weird reason a company seems to run on tea and coffee and if the company runs out then they may as well just call in the receivers. Or be like me and not drink tea or coffee and stick to water. Much safer than trying to remember 15 people’s beverage likes and dislikes, and I don’t have to wash up afterwards.

To finish I’d like to make a personal 11th commandment. Please stop using ternary operators where a simple, normal, readable, ‘if’ statement will suffice. It’s a bit like reading a Tom Clancy and discovering a bit of Chaucer thrown into the prose for no reason. It does not scan!

{ed: I am deeply offended by this unjustified attack on the ternary op. This op. is like discovering the words of Jane Austen within a review of Pride and Prejudice. I won’t push this point too far though – as I might start a civil war amongst the SD technical team!}

Why can’t developers and designers see eye to eye on site creation? Well both look at a task from two different points of view – visual impact and core functionality; but both have the same ultimate aim – to create a site that they are proud of and that serves the client’s wishes. These differences can be the ruin of any site but can be solved by one simple device: communication; and I don’t mean just a chat at the start of the project but continual interaction at every step of the process, which is how we do it at Slightly Different.

If a designer would like a bulletin board in a CMS based site and the CMS does not offer this functionality then it’s up to the developer to suggest other options; writing a custom plugin, using a different CMS etc. Unless developer and designer sit down and talk about the specification at the start of the project then countless hours and budget will be lost later down the line when the developer suddenly realises that there is something in the specification that will be impossible to achieve within the budget but that has been promised to the client.

This works both ways. Developers should realise that designers are not “just being difficult” and should work with them to make a site that was enjoyable to create instead of a battle of wills. Granted, a developer doesn’t see the point of design half the time but oddly that’s what makes the projects we work on enjoyable.

In other words, just talk to each other. Designers are not all effete Flash lovers and developers are not all geeky code-monkeys.

As the theme for this newsletter is Spring I thought I’d share a few Easter eggs with you.  Apart from being an overpriced ovoid made from cooking chocolate an Easter egg can also be a feature or area hidden inside a piece of software or even a website.  Some of these eggs are getting pretty famous, for example the flight simulator inside the ’97 version of Microsoft Excel, and more are appearing every day.

One company famous for their Easter eggs is Google, as you probably know they offer their search engine in various languages but they also have Klingon, Elmer Fudd, Pig Latin and leetspeak versions.  Google are also famous for their April fool’s Easter eggs:  GPaper, Google Romance and Pigeon Rank.  Google also hide eggs in their software – download Google Earth, run it and then press Crtl+Alt+a to start a flight simulator!

I’ll leave the last two eggs in our Easter basket to the Firefox web browser:  In the Firefox address bar type ‘about:Mozilla’ or ‘about:robots’.

For more on Easter eggs see this Wikipedia article.