Defensive programming is a style of programming designed to minimize the possibility of bugs introduced by code changes or unforeseen usage of the software.
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Stack implementation by Design by Contract vs Defensive Programming
I am trying to write Stack code using the two techniques i.e Design by Contract vs Defensive Programming but I am not sure if I am doing right or not.I am not throwing any kind of exception or error ...
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votes
3answers
299 views
What is the difference between debugging and antibugging?
The terms debugging and antibugging seem to be widely used for referring to tools, measures and design patterns to get rid of bugs.
After reading Peter Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence ...
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15answers
10k views
Does TDD make defensive programming redundant?
Today I had an interesting discussion with a colleague.
I am a defensive programmer. I believe that the rule "a class must ensure that its objects have a valid state when interacted with from outside ...
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votes
2answers
80 views
Defensive coding against an 'official' WSDL service specification
Earlier today I was asked to diagnose an issue in some development code. It turned out that the issue was caused by a new stub implementation returning random data which did not match the service ...
104
votes
16answers
17k views
Should I add redundant code now just in case it may be needed in the future?
Rightly or wrongly, I'm currently of the belief that I should always try to make my code as robust as possible, even if this means adding in redundant code / checks that I know won't be of any use ...
2
votes
1answer
191 views
Checking for nil in Go [closed]
In Go, is it idiomatic to check for nil and return an error if a parameter is nil?
Should pointer method receivers ever include nil checks?
I've seen a lot of code in other languages where people ...
2
votes
3answers
197 views
Null values handling in big scale applications
Tl;dr: Should we return null and not know origins of the error or throw exceptions and handle them appropriately?
A few years ago I found this article: http://stackify.com/golden-rule-programming/
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29
votes
7answers
4k views
Should I validate a method call's return value even if I know that the method can't return bad input?
I'm wondering if I should defend against a method call's return value by validating that they meet my expectations even if I know that the method I'm calling will meet such expectations.
GIVEN
User ...
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0answers
64 views
Design by Contract and Defensive Programming Confusion [duplicate]
I have been interested in better coding practices/methods which makes the reliability and maintenance less painful effort. I read the chapter about Design by Contract on "Object Oriented Software ...
0
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1answer
404 views
Your thoughts on Best Practices for Scientific Computing? [closed]
A recent paper by Wilson et al (2014) pointed out 24 Best Practices for scientific programming. It's worth to have a look. I would like to hear opinions about these points from experienced programmers ...
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vote
1answer
2k views
Should we always write Defensive null check in code? [duplicate]
Are there any scenarios where we should not write defensive checks for null?
Should we write defensive code or check for NULL every time we have passed a parameter or received a value back from a ...
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votes
3answers
390 views
Is it worthwhile to try to write foolproof data structures?
The problem
We need to store data in a table-like way, but we have very strict space constraints (~1Mb per table of 10k+ rows). We store data like this:
ID | reviews | factor | score | interval | ...
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8answers
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Defensive Programming vs Exception Handling?
I'm working through the book "Head First Python" (it's my language to learn this year) and I got to a section where they argue about two code techniques: Defensive coding vs Exception handling. Here ...
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2answers
4k views
Differences between Design by Contract and Defensive Programming
Could Designing by Contract (DbC) be a way to program defensively?
Is one way of programming better in some cases than the other?
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12answers
18k views
What defines robust code?
My professor keeps referring to this Java example when he speaks of "robust" code:
if (var == true) {
...
} else if (var == false) {
...
} else {
...
}
He claims that "robust code" means ...
12
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3answers
336 views
Do I need to deal with the situation where private methods are called through reflection?
When creating a library, must I ensure that the private methods must work as expected when called not by other methods of the same class, but by another library through reflection?
For example, if a ...
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4answers
879 views
How defensive should we be?
We've been running Pex over some code, and it has been showing some good things (well bad things, but showing them before it gets to production!).
However, one of the nice things about Pex is that it ...
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votes
3answers
7k views
if ('constant' == $variable) vs. if ($variable == 'constant')
Lately, I've been working a lot in PHP and specifically within the WordPress framework. I'm noticing a lot of code in the form of:
if ( 1 == $options['postlink'] )
Where I would have expected to see:...
