For the full show notes visit:

http://www.codingblocks.net/episode53

For the full show notes visit:
http://www.codingblocks.net/episode50

News

• Husain and Mike - Check your email!
• Shout out to AngryZoot! We just haven’t mentioned her in a while, and she’s awesome - and does martial arts
• Cynical Developer - James Studdart - Cake, XAML, React (Zac Braddy)
• Mark McDow - Winner of the O’Reilly Software Architecture Convention - $1700
• Maurizio Pozzobon - Code Maid retraction
• O’Reilly discount code - 50% off print, 40% off e-books! (Soft Skills - JavaScript: The Good Parts)

So - you should probably follow us on twitter, or join the mailing list!

Michael attended DevFest 2016 - Google Developer Group
http://www.gdgatl.xyz/

Secret Back Door in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/china-phones-software-security.html

Allen attended MVP Summit - amazing

• Did some F#
  http://c4fsharp.net/
• F# Dojo with Fractal Trees:
  https://github.com/c4fsharp/Dojo-Fractal-Forest
• Did some Bot programming - cool stuff
• Hololens:
  https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us
• Uhro Sharp - 3D programming in C#
  https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/urho/
• Visual Studio for the Mac?!
  https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/

Reply All - Pepe the Frog
https://gimletmedia.com/episode/77-the-grand-tapestry-of-pepe/

Want a Coding Blocks sticker?
Send us a Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope

Clean Code - Drawing!
Oddvar Tengesdal won a copy of Clean Code!

Programming Beyond Practices
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920047391.do

Survey

[yop_poll id="26"]

Formatting

• If your code is a mess, then people will assume that your attention to detail in how the app was coded is also a mess - perception
• Teams should adopt formatting rules and follow them
• Automated tools help with the process
• “Code formatting is important”
• Code formatting has a direct affect on maintainability and extensibility of code over time

Vertical Formatting

• Try to keep max length around 500 lines long and smaller is better - FitNesse app is in this range
• Tomcat and Ant - several thousand lines long and at least half are over 200
• Newspaper metaphor - read it vertically - headlines at the top detail increases as we go down the page
• Separate concepts with blank lines
• Closely associated code should be grouped together so it’s dense
• Concepts (methods) that are closely related should be grouped as closely together as possible to keep from hunting through files
• Variable declarations should be as close to their usage as possible
• If the methods are short, then the variable declarations should be at the top of the function!
• Control variables for loop should be defined within the loop
• Instance variables should be declared at the top of a class
• When one function calls another, those should be close vertically in the file
• Conceptual affinity - when methods do similar things or are named similarly, they should also appear close to each other
• Vertical ordering of methods - the caller should be first, then the callee, and that method’s callee, etc…on down the page

New Survey
New Macbooks
- Death of Macbook Pro?
- The beginning of a new awesome era?

Horizontal Formatting

• How wide should a line be?!
• In the popular projects examined, it appeared that 40% of lines were between 20 and 60 characters
• Another 30% of lines were less than 10 characters…
• Author suggests that beyond 100-120 is careless
• Put spaces on both sides of an assignment operator (equals sign)
• Don’t put spaces between the function name and the parens
• DO put spaces after individual arguments / parameters in a list - shows they are separate
• Also use spacing to indicate the precedence of operations - think of spacing in math equations with several parentheses - author calls it out for order of precedence, I actually don’t like this one - I prefer grouping with parens
• Lining up variable declarations, names, types - found that it was distracting to the “story” of the code….I agree
• Hierarchically lining up code based on it’s scope - super important
• Author would sometimes condense multiple lines into one (like a get; set;) eventually set it back for readability (breaking indentation)
• What about for PRINT statements in SQL???
  while statements - indent the semicolon on the next line…otherwise they’re hidden
• Follow the team’s formatting rules…don’t go vigilante
• He threw in Uncle Bob’s formatting rules

Resources we Like

• Clean Code
  http://amzn.to/2cryvJR

Tip of the Week

• Michael: Chrome Debugging - Break on Attribute Modification
  https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/javascript/add-breakpoints
• Allen: Enforce code formatting amongst many editors for people on a team - from Gustav in our Slack community
  http://editorconfig.org/
• Joe: Coding Math on Youtube:
  https://www.youtube.com/user/codingmath

In this episode, we take our first dive into the book Clean Code by Robert Martin and specifically we talk about writing meaningful names for all things code related.  You'll be amazed at how following some decent rules that you can start naming things that will help you and fellow coders understand your code at a glance.

You can see the original show notes and put your own stamp on our survey here:
http://www.codingblocks.net/episode47

News

Samsung 960 Pro
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10698/samsung-announces-960-pro-and-960-evo-m2-pcie-ssds

SQL Server 2016 Columnstore for real time operational analytics
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn817827.aspx

Krebs site taken off Akamai
http://www.zdnet.com/article/krebs-on-security-booted-off-akamai-network-after-ddos-attack-proves-pricey/

The best Android distribution is iOS?
Outlaw’s thoughts on various phone OS’s

Survey

[yop_poll id="23"]

Meaningful Names - Clean Code Chapter 2

“If a name requires a comment, then the name does not reveal its intent”

• Write explicit code - naming variables and methods can reveal the entire intent of the code
• Avoid using words that would be confusing like “List” as they refer to programming types and could be misleading : accountList should be accounts
• Avoid using characters that look like numbers i and L or capital o
• disinformative vs noninformative
  • noise words “data” “info” - noninformative
• Types should almost never be in a name “table” “string” “object”
• Names should be distinguished so a user can look at them and understand the differences
• Use pronounceable names
• Use searcheable names - longer names trump shorter names
• Author’s pref - single letter names should only be used as local variables inside small methods - length of the name should correspond to the size of its scope
• Avoid encoding names
• Avoid Hungarian Notation with typing as part of the variable name - simply not needed nowadays
• Stop prefixing member (instance) variables with m_ or _
• Decorating Interfaces vs Classes with a prefix / suffix - opinion - he prefers
  • ClassImp or vs IType
• Don’t force someone to map variable names in their mind - n = username…smart programmer vs professional programmer - clarity is king
• Class names should be nouns - English 101 - NOT VERBS
• Method names should be verbs
• Use get, set, is - javabean standard
• When constructors are overloaded, use static factory methods with explicit names - liked this one, possibly make the constructors private
• Don’t get cute with naming by means of jokes (inside or well known)
• Use consistent naming - Get, Set, Controller - makes it easier to understand and code various parts of an application
• Avoid puns - add for a collection vs add for setting a value - two different meanings with the same name
• Use technical names such as pattern names or CS terms in your names - other programmers will understand them better than the problem domain in some cases
• Fall back to the problem domain for a name if there is no suitable technical name
• Adding context to naming can clarify their use - prefixes can work but putting variables into classes may work out better

“Hardest thing about choosing good names is that it requires good descriptive skills and a shared cultural background”

Renaming things that don’t make sense as you work in code is a good thing.

Resources we Like

Clean Code

Even though we’re giving our thoughts on the various ideas throughout the book, Clean Code has tons of excellent sample code that really helps drive the points home. We can’t recommend it enough - it’s probably one of the few books EVERY developer should read and revisit from time to time.
http://amzn.to/2cryvJR

Tip of the Week

Allen: Implementing OAuth in ASP.NET for a number of providers
http://www.oauthforaspnet.com/

Michael: Get out there! Go to conferences, meetups, do it all!
http://www.connect.tech/
https://www.atlantacodecamp.com/2016

This week on Coding Blocks, Allen says www as best he can, Joe eats the microphone, and Michael does something crazy as we discuss Stack Overflow's Salary Calculator and our experiences in landing the job - what to do and what not to do.

This time we're talking about problems with nulls, stored procedures, and impostor syndrome.

Link to Episode 43’s Full Show Notes:
http://www.codingblocks.net/episode43

This week on Coding Blocks, Joe changes a different kind of string, Allen drools over the Hellcat, and Michael shares his random thoughts. We span a collection of topics including GraphQL framework envy, bash on Windows, and whether it takes two to Django.

It's time for more DevOps fun as we continue learning about the Twelve-Factor app. This week we dive into the next three chapters: port binding, concurrency, and disposability.

The holidays are coming sooner than we realized, so we gotta get our wish lists together. After all, no one wants to sit around the Festivus Pole without their favorite dev toys. This week we discuss some of the toys we love, as well as the ones we drool over, and even the ones we're not so crazy about.

Part 4 of our design patterns series, this time up it's Adapters, Facades, and Mementos. Oh, an which tech luminary would make the best head of state!

This week we answer a question, Allen registers for school, Joe reads some numbers, Michael breaks out the survey results, and Joe cringes at the thought of bidets. It's time for episode 29! And we thought, what better to talk about than to continue our discussion on hierarchical data solutions.

This week we give away Joe's stuff, we break up with IE8 like a big boy, Joe and Allen get excited about readme files, and we argue about which is worse: bad code or bad architecture. That and more in this week's episode where we explore the new bits in ASP.NET 5.

This week we tackle one of life's great quesitons, does Jack Bauer give high fives? Also, we go over everything you need to know about delegates, events, callbacks and closures in .NET.

Big thanks to <a href="http://twitter.com/kappelcodesalot">@kappelcodesalot</a> for being the inspiration for this episode!

Talking about how to best organize your code, moving from school-work to work-work, the future of Silverlight, and (as always) lots of poo-pooing.

We gather around the Festivus pole this holiday season and before we get into the Airing of Grievances, we discuss our favorite tools. No, not people. Actual tools. Srsly.

We’re back to the gang of four, continuing with another segment of design patterns. This time we’re talking about some of our favorite Behavioral Design Patterns: Observer, Chain of Responsibilities, Iterator patterns. Also, why the visitor pattern is weird and what it’s like to be raked over hot coals.

We're excited about ASP.NET vNext, we might be Superman, a cute little ninja was MEAN to Allen, and we attempt to answer some questions.

This week we’re following up on our episode about talking about Creational Design Patterns a few of our favorite behavioral patterns: Template. Strategy, and Null Object.

Also, pumpkin spice lattes, Mario’s pants, and a billion dollar mistake.

"Water Cooler" episode talking about sweet sugary C# kisses, JavaScript as a first language, T-shaped developers, how to get addicted to drugs and...Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

You down with AOP? This week we're talking with Vlad Hrybok about his spectacular Aspect Oriented Programming Framework: Aspectacular.

Highlights include lots of Design Patterns, Acronyms, Buzzwords and...Duff Beer?