March 2008 Entries
When you are coding in a hurry, it is very tempting to write business logic in the first place that comes to mind, such as a button click handler. However, for all but the simplest systems, such a practice leads very quickly to a chaotic system whose business logic is scattered like the ash from an erupting volcano. Create a great domain model, though, and you will be able to nimbly align your software with your emerging business needs.
Every time I see an example of copy-and-paste programming, I'm like a bull who just spotted a waving red flag. "Don't Repeat Yourself" (DRY) is a principle every programmer should live by, for Turing's sake! Read on for a discussion of why copy-and-paste is egregious, and how to refactor an expansive set of conditional logic branches into a concise and elegant piece of code.
Dealing with vendor data (or your own) in the form of "codes" can pose significant challenges. You must ensure that your source code remains readable, that data are properly validated, and that data can be displayed as user-friendly descriptions. The built-in solutions (named constants and enums) help, but they have some significant shortcomings. If you derive a class of named constants from the MagicStringTranslator class, though, you can vanquish all 3 challenges in one fell swoop! Egghead Cafe...