When Bad Code Happens To Good Developers

Even great developers would have written a bad line of code once in their lives, which can can lead to anything from making the layout of an app look funny to major security flaws. Here’s how good coders deal with the daunting development process.
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Angry computer guy picture from Shutterstock

A piece from readwrite details three things developers do to tackle the pressures of writing flawed code head on and supporting them on the underlying infrastructure:

• Embrace failure. Over and over again.
  The infrastructure that code runs on is just as important as the code itself so ensuring that a piece of software is robust enough to withstand any kind of system failure is crucial for developers. Netflix’s open source Chaos Monkey tool is able to simulate these types of failures, giving application makers the chance to learn from any problems that may occur.
• Abuse your code
  As for the code itself, testing is again the key to improvement. Developers should assume the role of their worst enemy and continually break their own code to actively root out errors in the process.
• Prove legacy apps don’t work
  If you’re working in an established enterprise, chances are the company is running on a lot of old IT including archaic hardware and applications. Trouble is, as the developer in the company, you’re forced to write new code that builds on top of that legacy infrastructure, which is often problematic even if the new code is fantastic.

  While there’s little that can be done about a company being stuck on old IT, testing and demonstrating the issues caused by running new applications on old infrastructure may provide just enough impetus for your organisation to consider an IT overhaul, which will help the app development process in the long run.

How do you and your company deal with the onerous application development process? Let us know in the comments.

[Via readwrite]