Edward Mark's List: programming

• Logs can provide useful information about bugs that are hard
  to reproduce (such as those that occur in the production environment but
  that cannot be reproduced in the test environment).
  

• 
  Logs can provide statistics and data relevant to
  performance, such as the time passing between statements.
  

• 
  When configurable, logs allow general information to be
  captured in order to debug unanticipated specific problems
  without having to modify and/or redeploy the code just to deal
  with those specific problems.
  

• Remove floating point operations.
  

• 
  Don't allocate new memory blocks unnecessarily.
  

• 
  Fold constants together.
  

• 
  Move I/O into a buffer.
  

• 
  Try not to divide.
  

• 
  Try not to do expensive typecasts.
  

• 
  Move a pointer rather than recomputing indices.
  

To learn how to design software, study the action of a mentor by
being physically present when they are designing. Then study
well-written pieces of software. After that, you can read some books on the latest design techniques.

Then you must do it yourself. Start with a small project.
When you are finally done, consider how the design failed or
succeeded and how you diverged from your original conception.
They move on to larger projects, hopefully in conjunction with
other people. Design is a matter of judgment that takes years
to acquire. A smart programmer can learn the basics adequately in
two months and can improve from there.

• 
  Writing code knowing that someone will have to read it;
  

• 
  Applying the golden rule;
  

• 
  Choosing a solution that is straightforward,
  even if you could get by with another solution faster;
  

• 
  Sacrificing small optimizations that obfuscate the code;
  

• 
  Thinking about the reader and spending some of your precious time to make it easier on her; and
  

Programmers often succumb to this because they are
eager to please and not very good at saying no.
There are four defenses against this:


• 
  Communicate as much as possible with everyone in the company so that
  no one can mislead the executives about what is going on,
  

• 
  Learn to estimate and schedule defensively and explicitly and give
  everyone visibility into what the schedule is and where it stands,
  

• 
  Learn to say no, and say no as a team when necessary, and
  

• 
  Quit if you have to.