Programming

Sliding Window and Two Pointer Technique (Photo Credit: Google Image) Story There is a school called ABC School, which frequently arranges extracurricular activities like games, dancing competitions, art competitions, etc. for their students. Today it arranged 2 interesting games called sliding window and rope pulling. The rules for the sliding window game are: first, make 2 teams; second, each team takes their position, and then, based on some condition, they slide their window 1 or more units until the window reaches the end position. ...

Linear and Binary Search (Photo Credit: Crio.Do) Story Let’s say students of the CSE department of University XYZ are going on a study tour in a tourist place. They are staying in a hotel, and surprisingly, they booked rooms on different floors, not the same, with one student per floor. And students get their room according to their rank/roll. This means students with the highest rank are staying on the topmost floor, and those with the lowest are staying on the lower floor. So the 1st rank lives at the top, and the last rank lives in the low, let’s say the 1st floor. ...

Detailed Refactoring Series: Part 1: Refactoring - Part 1 (Principle, What It Is & Is Not, Identify the Smells First) Refactoring Book Book introduction Martin Fowler’s “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code” is a classic book that teaches developers how to improve the structure of existing code without changing what it does. Refactoring makes code easier to read, maintain and expand, helping teams write better software over time. ...

Other Parts of This Series: Part 1: Refactoring - Part 1 (Principle, What It Is & Is Not, Identify the Smells First) Refactoring Techniques In our previous part, we talked about what is refactoring and what is not, the motivation behind this, and identifying the common code smells we generally found in our codebase. In this part we are going to explore some well-known techniques that can help us to clean up the code smells. So let’s start… ...

Other Parts of This Series: Part 2: Refactoring - Part 2 (Techniques for Cleaning Up the Smells) Refactoring Principles Main Principle of Refactoring The main motivation of refactoring is the Boy Scout rule, which is “Keep the camp ground cleaner than you found it.” In our words, “Keep the codebase cleaner and more readable than you found it.” Definition Refactoring is the process of restructuring existing code to improve its quality (like readability or performance) without altering its external or existing behavior. ...

Detailed Pragmatic Programmer Tips Series: Part 1: Becoming a Pragmatic (Better) Programmer - Part 1 (Intro, Team Player) Pragmatic Programmer Book Book introduction “The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey To Mastery” by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt is a classical book published in 1999 and is a book about how to become a pragmatic programmer. Which really means a ‘Good Programmer.’ Yes, it was published about 20 years ago. But this book still provides many insights that are very relevant to programmers or software engineers, as some people might call them these days. ...

Other Parts of This Series: Part 2: Becoming a Pragmatic (Better) Programmer - Part 2 (Design, Implement, Debug) Pragmatic Programmer (Photo Credit: Unsplash) Story Remember the guy Ismael from the previous part? He was good at broad-level thinking while coding and efficiently designing software. Today he shares some tips and tricks for making code decoupled and concurrent. Decouple and Concurrent Coding Tips Maintain SRP (single responsibility principle) and reduce inter-component dependency, because decoupled code is easier to change. Depend on internal state, not external, which means call some component, and this will tell something. But don’t ask external components for internal decision-making. Don’t chain method calls to do something; instead, create a pipeline based on data. Avoid global data; if it’s extremely important, then wrap global data into an API. Use well-designed patterns and programming paradigms according to business needs. Don’t pay inheritance tax, which means avoid inheritance as much as possible. Use interfaces to achieve polymorphism. Prefer composition over inheritance, meaning create Has-A relationships, not Is-A, whenever possible. Frequently changed values should be parameterized using an external configuration service. Analyze workflow to improve concurrency. Use an activity diagram for better understanding of concurrent workflow. Be very aware of the shared states, and remember random failures are often concurrency issues. Use blackboards and pen and paper for high-level analysis of workflow. Story Osama is an experienced software developer currently playing the team lead role. But despite being a team lead, he is actively coding regularly. Because he loves coding. He has a very good track record of following good coding practices and is also known as a “pro-coder” in his colleagues’ circle. ...

Other Parts of This Series: Part 1: Becoming a Pragmatic (Better) Programmer - Part 1 (Intro, Team Player) Part 3: Becoming a Pragmatic (Better) Programmer - Part 3 (Decouple, Concurrent Coding, Project & Team) Pragmatic Programmer (Photo Credit: Unsplash) Story Ismael gets hired by an established IT company as a senior software developer. He has worked on several projects and in various business fields throughout the years, gaining expertise and experience. Based on his skills and experience, he keeps a respectable approach when designing or programming a system. ...

Other Parts of This Series: Part 2: Becoming a Pragmatic (Better) Programmer - Part 2 (Design, Implement, Debug) Pragmatic Programmer (Photo Credit: Unsplash) Story Sajjad is an experienced programmer who has worked in the software industry for many years. He tries to be skilled and make himself fit for use in any situation and any kind of project. He always works to sharpen the basic knowledge and not be dependent on any particular tools or technology, but rather always try to choose good tools and technology that are fit for that particular scenario. He observes some common characteristics that great (pragmatic) programmers hold. Like they are early adopters or fast learners, critical thinkers, rethinkers, and realistic. Some of them are jacks of all trades. So Sajjad also keeps these characteristics, keeping the attitude and philosophy of approaching problems and solutions like a pragmatic programmer. ...

Detailed Clean Code Series: Part 1: Writing Clean Code - Part 1 (Conceptually Clean and Bad Code) Clean Code Book (Photo Credit: SoBrief) Book introduction “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin (popularly known as Uncle Bob) is one of the most influential books in software engineering. It focuses on the principles, patterns, and best practices for writing clean, maintainable, and efficient code. ...