Core Coding Principles

The course is for developers who are looking to improve their ability to write good, clean, maintainable code. In it, we cover key coding principles that help to develop a language for discussion within the team. These include coupling and cohesion, the SOLID principles, DRY.

Note: the course examples and exercises are in C#, but the theory covered is applicable in all OO languages.

Goals -

• To get developers thinking about code quality

• To provide developers with the tools they need to discuss and evaluate code quality

• To get developers to build alignment about what “good” code is

• To provide developers with some guidelines about how to go about writing better code

Course Structure -

The following topics are covered:

• Preparation – what is the team’s existing understanding of good code?

• Lenses for Thinking about Code Quality - Thinking about programming like Kent Beck:

• Core Values of Software Development

• Key Principles

• The Four Rules of Simple Design

• Cohesion and Coupling

• DRY

• SOLID Principles:

• Single Responsibility Principle

• Open-Closed Principle

• Liskov Substitution Principle

• Interface Segregation Principle

• Dependency Inversion Principle

• The Practice of Writing Clean Code:

• Coding Standards

• Meaningful naming

• Functions

• Comments

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course developers will be able to:

• Understand why code quality is important and how it enables effective software development

• Describe key coding principles such as cohesion & coupling, DRY, and the SOLID principles

• Reason about code quality using a variety of lenses

• Discuss code quality ideas among a team and be able to, as a team, work towards alignment and agreement on the team’s coding standards

• Write cleaner, more readable, more communicative, more flexible code than before