Tackling A Code Project

A very wise and immensely knowledgable female programmer once told me to write and test code for when in it fails, not for when it works because it’s always going to work. This bit of advice to someone who isn’t well versed in programming and code language might find this silly. Why would I purposely break something that is working just fine? That thought is preposterous! Well that thought is why great applications and projects are made. As programmers, it is our job to keep in mind people who are less adept and accident prone. People are going to make mistakes and therefore things will break. Building fool proof applications is not an easy task but with a guideline in place, a programmer can create any application that not only is user friendly but also very elegant to view and transparent to make.

As a developer in the making, tackling my first coding project was like trying to build a sand castle for the first time. For me, there was no clear starting point and working with a partner only complicated that more. It wasn’t because my partner was a terrible partner or anything but it was more along the lines that we were both equally as lost as to where to begin our elaborate sand castle. After about a week of tirelessly work my partner and I were finally able to come together to produce a product and in doing so learn some valuable lessons that I’d like to share with you.

When building your sand castle, location is key. You want your castle to be in a spot where everyone can see your beautiful, hard work as well as far enough from the water so it won’t be destroyed. As this relates to your code project, this is your audience. Who do you want using your product? Who do you think will use your product? This part should take no more than 10 minutes to think about because then from there you will use that information to form an idea. The next part of your castle is the type of castle you will build. The type of castle relates to the function of your application. Essentially what you are doing. My first application was an NFL game win predictor which compared two teams, in there current state, and predicted a winner in percentage form. My partner and I wanted to appeal to sports analysis and football enthusiasts. If the function of the application is already given to you then thats less time you have to think about a topic and more time you’ll have researching it.

Since our metaphor is taking place on the beach, you can think of the beach itself as the internet and each grain of sand a file on the internet. With this in mind our next step is to set up some data that we can pull from the internet to fill our application database. This step can take anywhere from a couple of hours a to a day to complete. It is important to choose a piece of data that will be constant for the rest of your project that way it won’t interfere with later processes. The data you have will dictate the tone in terms of what you application can and cannot do. As a final project, the application you build will access all of these files that are housed with in the database.

Now that we have our location, foundation, and materials, we can start the construction of our castle. Sand is not the sturdiest of materials so you have to work in a way that builds off of what you previously built. If you are working in a group or with a partner, it would be beneficial to work together on the same area. You can’t work on the top part of the castle if you partner is still sculpting the first floor. This is the fun part of the code project and should take the most amount of time. Here you are creating the features and configuring how your application will interact which whatever interface its going to have its users on. It doesn’t matter if thats the command line or the web, you are working on the interactivity and design of the product. The features are all of the things that you application will do which is basically your own custom functions/ methods.

One you have all the moving pieces in place, the last step is to take a step back and admire the work you have done. You want to circle your castle, looking for any weak points, any points that would possibly crumble your project. In other words test you application for it breaking! You want to purposely try to break what you created because if you so how manage to break, then someone else using the product will definitely break it.

Another great pointer when constructing your sand castle is remember to build just the castle and not a village. Start on one thing before you move on to the next. Once you get the castle built and sturdy then you can think about the surrounding pieces or adding on the main structure. After you complete these steps, your product should then be ready to demo to test the working piece on a larger scale. Other developers can add input on things that might need to be tweaked or just give you general praise for your hard work. So now lets recap.

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