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How to actually write a program?

Piet pit.grinja at gmx.de
Mon Sep 6 12:43:08 EDT 2004 
Hello,
now my 2 cents about this topic...
1. Get a good text editor.
When you already sit in front of an empty file, this point is
apparently done ;-)
2. Get a or "the" revision control system. It is freely available for
personal use.
3. Do not start with a program that only accepts input from the
console and sends output to the console, but learn how to handle files
so that you can store the information you fed into your program and
the data you get out.
4. Don´t try to make your code as short as possible, but as readable
as possible. Don´t put too many statements in a single line. Don´t use
too many list comprehensions and stuff like that in the beginning too
frequently.
5. Document your code lines from the very beginning. Don´t leave out
any commenting of your code because in the moment you code it is just
completely clear to you what the code means, is supposed to do and how
it works. It neccessarily won´t be that clear tomorrow.
6. Don´t make your variable names too short. Give them names that
describe what they are, and try to use similar name patterns for
similar variables. Use names that can be unambigously identified by a
search pattern, so that you will find occurences of variables quickly
without too much overhead.
7. Oops, I almost forgot: get a language that can be learned quickly
so that you get your code together without too much head scratching,
but a language that lets you also use advanced concepts when you are
ripe for them. Since you are posting in comp.lang.python, this is
apparently already done as well.
Have fun

Peter
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