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04 CodeStyleHumans

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04 CodeStyleHumans

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Code Style

for Humans
Prof. Philip Koopman

“Any fool can write code that a


computer can understand. Good
programmers write code that
humans can understand.”
– Martin Fowler © 2020 Philip Koopman
Coding Style: Understandability
 Anti-Patterns: “There are two ways of constructing a software
 “Style doesn’t matter; design: one way is to make it so simple that
it passes all the tests” there are obviously no deficiencies and the
other way is to make it so complicated that
 Code that is clever
there are no obvious deficiencies.”
instead of clear — C.A.R. (Tony) Hoare, 1980 Turing Award Talk

 Other people must understand your code


 Peer reviews won’t work if nobody can read your code
– Write code so that others can tell it is obviously correct
 If others can’t understand it, they will inject bugs
 If it’s not obviously correct, then it’s wrong.
© 2020 Philip Koopman 2
Make Code Easy To Read
 Consistent formatting Obfuscated C
Winner:
 Consistent indentation, braces Flight Simulator

 Templated headers for files and functions


 Spaces and “()” to avoid precedence confusion
 Use space instead of tab

 Comments
 Explain what & why, not just code paraphrase
 Comments are not a design

 Naming
 Descriptive, consistent naming conventions
– E.g., variables are nouns; functions are verbs
 Avoid magic numbers (use const)
 Avoid macros (use inline) http://blog.aerojockey.com/post/iocccsim
© 2020 Philip Koopman 3
Good Code Hygiene
 Modularity
 Many smaller .c/.cpp files (one per class)
 Externally visible declarations into .h file

 Conditional Statements
 Boolean conditional expression results; no assignments
 All switch statements have a default (usually error trap)
 Limited nesting (see also cyclomatic complexity)

 Variables
 Descriptive names that differ significantly
 Smallest practicable scope for variables; initialize at point of definition
 Use typedefs to define narrow types (also use uint32_t, use enum, etc.)
 Range checks & bounds checks (e.g., buffer overflow)

 Handle errors returned by called functions © 2020 Philip Koopman 4


Optimization
"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should
not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%”
 Donald Knuth (December 1974). "Structured Programming
with go to Statements". ACM Journal Computing Surveys 6 (4): 268.

 Don’t optimize unless you have performance data


 Most code doesn’t matter for speed
 Use little or no assembly language. Get a better compiler.

 Optimization makes it hard to know your code is right


 Do you want correct code or tricky code?
– (Pick one. Which one is safer?)
 Buy a bigger CPU if you have to https://xkcd.com/1691/

© 2020 Philip Koopman 5


Coding Understandability Best Practices
 Pick a coding style and follow it Great style depends
 Use tool support for language formatting upon point of view.
 Evaluate naming as part of peer review
 Comments are there to explain implementation
 The point of good style is to avoid bugs
 Make it hard for a reviewer to miss a problem
– Even better, make it easy for a tool to find problem
 Also need to have a good technical style
 Coding style pitfalls:
 Optimizing for the author instead of the reviewer
 Making it too easy to deviate from style rules
© 2020 Philip Koopman 6
“Always code as if
the guy who ends up
maintaining your code
will be a
violent psychopath
who knows where you live.

Code for readability.”

(Author unclear)

https://goo.gl/pvDMHX CC BY-NC 2.0


© 2020 Philip Koopman 7
https://xkcd.com/1513/
© 2020 Philip Koopman 8

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