system quality aspect characterizing the ease of software maintenance
115
votes
20answers
6k views
How to keep a big and complex software product maintainable over the years?
I have been working as a software developer for many years now. It has been my experience that projects get more complex and unmaintainable as more developers get involved in the development of the ...
77
votes
18answers
6k views
How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?
How would one know if the code he created is easily maintainable and readable? Of course in your point of view (the one who written the code) your code is readable and maintainable, but we should be ...
66
votes
19answers
5k views
Is it ok to replace optimized code with readable code?
Sometimes you run into a situation where you have to extend/improve some existing code. You see that the old code is very lean, but it's also difficult to extend, and takes time to read.
Is it a good ...
65
votes
17answers
8k views
Coding Guideline : Methods shouldn't contain more than 7 statements?
I was looking through the AvSol Coding Guidelines for C# and I agree with nearly everything but I'm really curious to see what other think of one specific rule.
AV1500
Methods should not ...
64
votes
17answers
3k views
What hurts maintainability?
For someone who doesn't have much real world experience yet, the notion of maintainable code is a bit vague, even though it follows from typical good practice rules. Intuitively I can tell that code ...
44
votes
9answers
5k views
Clean readable code vs fast hard to read code. When to cross the line?
When I write code I always try to make my code as clean and readable as possible.
Every now and then there comes a time when you need to cross the line and go from nice clean code to slightly uglier ...
41
votes
11answers
4k views
What characteristics or features make code maintainable?
I used to think I knew what this was, until I really started thinking about it... "maintainable"... what exactly makes code maintainable?
To me, if code must be maintainable that means we can expect ...
25
votes
11answers
2k views
Maintenance wise, is `else while` without intervening braces considered safe?
Is else while without intervening braces considered "safe" maintenance wise?
Writing if-else code without braces like below...
if (blah)
foo();
else
bar();
...carries a risk because the ...
24
votes
10answers
2k views
Are flag variables an absolute evil?
I remember doing a couple of projects where I totally neglected using flags and ended up with better architecture/code; however, it is a common practice in other projects I work at, and when code ...
20
votes
14answers
2k views
Why do so many developers believe performance, readability, and maintainability cannot coexist?
While responding to this question, I began to wonder why so many developers believe a good design should not account for performance because doing so would affect readability and/or maintainability.
...
18
votes
7answers
647 views
How to improve the training of students regarding maintainability?
Maintainability is a major stake of professional software development. Indeed, maintenance is nearly always the longest part of a software life cycle, as it lasts from the project release until ...
17
votes
9answers
1k views
Eliminating Magic Numbers: When is it time to say “No”?
We're all aware that magic numbers (hard-coded values) can wreak havoc in your program, especially when it's time to modify a section of code that has no comments, but where do you draw the line?
...
15
votes
11answers
2k views
How does one meaningfully measure maintainability?
Context: I'm an enterprise developer in an all-MS shop.
Can anyone recommend a good way of objectively measuring maintainability of a piece of code or an application?
Why maintainability: I'm tired ...
11
votes
5answers
516 views
Do high standards necessarily lead to frustration, and how to deal with it?
I consider myself a programming language enthusiast. When I find bad code, especially my own, it is hard to understand, hard to change, and hard to test.
My coworkers don't know better, or don't ...
11
votes
6answers
1k views
How to refactor code to some common code?
Background
I'm working on an ongoing C# project. I'm not a C# programmer, primarily a C++ programmer. So I was assigned basically easy and refactoring tasks.
The code is a mess. It's a huge project. ...
