Best Practices turned into Coding Horrors.
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What's wrong with it? I mean, it's simple enough I'd put it on one line, but I don't see anything in principle wrong with putting it on several, and as C# doesn't have multi-line string constants, you have to write it as it is there. Edit: apparently @ strings will let you do multi-line constants. Making code a stored procedure hides it away from the developer and makes it harder to see. Select queries should almost never be in one because it makes you go and look at the database to find out what the code is doing ... or, to put it another way, those queries are part of the business logic and should be in the code. But I have a somewhat old fashioned view of the database as essentially a minimally intelligent data store.
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I meant "that".
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Yes, those that sailed too far likely had a greater chance of something going wrong (per voyage).. but statistically over all, I expect out of all ships/lives lost that only a small percentage were from those sailing out too far. Most had no reason to try (unless they were explorers), so most of the risk was while in known waters (so why not have a best practice of never sailing period). This would be like most people not routinely driving more than 1000 miles (or kilometers) from their home (unless it was required of their job).. hence the [paraphrased] expression of "most [driving] accidents occur within X distance of ones home", simply because that is where the are [on the road] most of the time. In the end, just because something is done for the wrong reasons (i.e. to not fall off the end of the world) and happens to be useful (i.e. less lost lives/cargo), doesn't justify the basis (a variation of "the ends don't justify the means" I suppose). As an example, if a parent tells a young child not to talk to strangers, "just because", but not why explain why (since the child would unlikely be capable of comprehending why anyway), then that may work on the short term.. but, if left at that, in the long term it could be disastrous. Imagine if that child follows that directive to the letter "just because" their parent said so and one day there is a house fire, firefighters come and surround the house with the kid still inside. Now the child sees all these strangers and has to make a choice.. does he go outside, where all these strangers are, and break the rule.. or does he stay inside (or even hide, since several strangers are entering the house for some reason) to avoid them? A slightly contrived scenario (but not impossible) that illustrates how blindly following a "rule" without understanding why can [eventually] lead to a worse outcome than what the rule was indented to avoid. In some cases, like a young child's limited comprehension, you have to try and account for exceptions when stating the rule.. but when comprehension is possible, ignorant, "just because" logic is never an acceptable reason to do something. One should know _why_ something is better to use than another, in which case they shouldn't _need_ to be told to what [specifically] to do for the best, as it is the automatic choice (including _when_ to break the default choice). If I know a wood chipper chops up materials you put in it, and I know one is [potentially] running, then I implicitly choose not to put my hand in it.. I don't need to be told
Chad3F wrote:
and happens to be useful (i.e. less lost lives/cargo), doesn't justify the basis
Yes as a matter of a fact it does. Most software development exists to fulfill a need, often either an explicitly or even implicitly commercial. Just as sailing a ship did. Exploring might be 'fun' or 'cool' but the rate of return is very low. Whereas staying with the known routes provided a known rate of return. And that is what businesses want. They don't want fun/cool. They want money.
Chad3F wrote:
Teach that same person 10 concepts, with understanding, and now they know 100's or even 1000's of things (i.e. the meaningful combinations of those 10 concepts)
Of course that is what one wants. But one also wants every one to be a multi-talented genius as well and it just doesn't happen.
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I like the database to take that strain: it's what it is there for, after all. And I never, ever put SQL in code: I either use a view or a stored procedure.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
Oh yes, I have to agree. Prevents SQL injection attacks.
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Yeah. The compiler should concatenate all of those together when run. So using a stringbuilder everywhere that was used basically shows the person (people?) that wrote the document had no clue as to what they were talking about. Basically:
BRAINWAVE/1.0
Status-Code: 404
Status-Text: The requested brain could not be found. It may have been deleted or never installed.So there.
Gryphons Are Awesome! Gryphons Are Awesome!
I can't find a "Delete brain" button on my head. Should I remove my ears to find the button?
The quick red ProgramFOX jumps right over the
Lazy<Dog>. -
I can't find a "Delete brain" button on my head. Should I remove my ears to find the button?
The quick red ProgramFOX jumps right over the
Lazy<Dog>.Some of our members use the
GinAndTonic()method, which does a delete brain operation as a side effect.Software Zen:
delete this; -
It is a well known good practice to use
StringBuilders instead of doing manystringconcatenations. Yet, I got really impressed when I saw a document telling to replace things like this:private const string SQL =
"SELECT " +
" ID, " +
" NAME, " +
" BIRTHDAY " +
"FROM " +
" TABLE " +
"WHERE " +
" NAME LIKE @PARAM";By creating the
StringBuildereverytime in the method where the SQL was being used. Maybe I am wrong :doh: , but I really believeconsts aren't doing bad string concatenations all the time.There are a lot of people who encounter "best practices", turn off the brain and spew out nonsense, a constant is evaluated once on the JIT compile and that is the last time it uses the string add. Of course the DBA that gives a programmer direct read access to a table needs to be led out and shot.... There are good reasons for using StringBuilder, but that isn't one of them. I intentionally did string concatenation in my code to see how much StringBuilder helps. I got the code to work adding the statistics I gathered into a string. It ran in about 35 minutes. I added StringBuilder and cut the time to 15 minutes. I then added code to only convert the stats I built when I found a solution (several thousand) instead of when I created the stats (several million) and cut it down to 7 minutes. Finally I played around with the order of how the puzzle was solved and cut it to 4 minutes. My next improvement cut it down to 2 minutes. (Purchaced a computer with twice the rate of processing.)
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It is a well known good practice to use
StringBuilders instead of doing manystringconcatenations. Yet, I got really impressed when I saw a document telling to replace things like this:private const string SQL =
"SELECT " +
" ID, " +
" NAME, " +
" BIRTHDAY " +
"FROM " +
" TABLE " +
"WHERE " +
" NAME LIKE @PARAM";By creating the
StringBuildereverytime in the method where the SQL was being used. Maybe I am wrong :doh: , but I really believeconsts aren't doing bad string concatenations all the time.I am not sure what you are trying to do, but see very little reason is having separate strings for this in the first place. Can be represented as a single string. I would also guess that the complier will concantinate everyting, so trying to use a StringBuilder will probalby slow everything down.
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I am not sure what you are trying to do, but see very little reason is having separate strings for this in the first place. Can be represented as a single string. I would also guess that the complier will concantinate everyting, so trying to use a StringBuilder will probalby slow everything down.
The compiler will make everything into a single string... and I was presenting this as a coding horrer exactly because the many + that were done as const were being replaced by stringbuilders.
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Indeed, not a candidate for StringBuilderhood. And I write it as
private const string SQL =
@"
SELECT ID
, NAME
, BIRTHDAY
FROM TABLE
WHERE NAME LIKE @PARAM
" ;so it prints out nice in error messages [added>>] and I can very easily copy/paste it between a code file and SSMS or other SQL executor.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
so it prints out nice in error messages.
If that is where you want it printed out nicely, you could use: ...= "\nSELECT ID\n, NAME\n, BIRTHDAY\nFROM TABLE\nWHERE NAME LIKE @PARAM\n"; The thing I don't like about @"... is that intellesense puts in indents you don't want, while most of the time, intellesense is so handy, I don't like working without it. Of course, you might be one of those people who like readable code too. :)
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The "Best Practice" is not to use string concatenation in a loop. The reason is that under the hood when concatinating two strings, a third string will be created large enough to bold both source strings. The source strings will be copied to that new string, the original string destroyed, then recreated and the contents of the temporary string copied into it, then the temporary string destroyed. The concatination that you are showing should be fine, unless it is being performed in a loop.
KRucker wrote:
The concatination(sic) that you are showing should be fine, unless it is being performed in a loop.
How many const declarations run in a loop? Unless you are instantiating a class in a loop... which indicates the const field should also be static. You should really read posts more clearly, he wasn't complaining about the use of concatenations, but about people spouting off about best practices where the practices clearly don't apply. Makes those people look like they are doing things by rote without thinking about what they are saying or if what they say makes sense. Of course I have been guilty of that, I shouldn't throw stones when I live in a house with glass all around it. :) You forgot to mention each of those string parts get stuck in the intern table until the GC gets around to cleaning it up. ;P PS "that" I am guilty of includes: misreading items, not thinking things out, and saying inappropriate things. PPS Edited my post because Preview clearly showed your statement. On checking why posting didn't show, I missed some HTML tags that removed it from post.
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"Best practices" are "at best" someone's opinion. ;) In some cases that opinion may be shared by many, but that doesn't always make it right. After all, at one time, how many people had the opinion the world was flat and the best practice was not to sail too far out? While some things that are considered a best practice I do see reason to use over alternatives, I really don't like the idea of having an arbitrary list of "do these things for best results". They (you know, the "they" that killed Kenny) might as well call it "'boxes to use and not think outside of' practices" instead of "best practices".
I know the show that kills Kenny, because of an article I read that talks about it. (At least if I see the show's name, I'll also remember it kills Kenny) The article didn't say why they kill Kenny and I've only watched about 40 seconds tops to see if I wanted to watch it. Is it some group mindset that causes them to want to kill Kenny? Of course the writers put it in because it is funny to constantly kill the same person over and over and... (Which is why I could stand about 40 seconds of their humor.) What a scalawag that Columbus was, eh? I also like your alternative definition of best practices.
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I know the show that kills Kenny, because of an article I read that talks about it. (At least if I see the show's name, I'll also remember it kills Kenny) The article didn't say why they kill Kenny and I've only watched about 40 seconds tops to see if I wanted to watch it. Is it some group mindset that causes them to want to kill Kenny? Of course the writers put it in because it is funny to constantly kill the same person over and over and... (Which is why I could stand about 40 seconds of their humor.) What a scalawag that Columbus was, eh? I also like your alternative definition of best practices.
The "Kenny" reference was to indicate that the "They" context I was using was not a specific, or even tangible, group (such as an official standards body, like IETF, ISO, IEEE, ANSI, etc..). But instead was the unknown and mysterious "powers that be" (in the context of defining so-called "best" anything) that define "best practice" lists. As for the origin behind the actual killing of Kenny.. I guess it started out as some form of joke in the show (e.g. this poor kid Kenny just can't catch a break), and just kept on going from there. Eventually they stopped doing it [regularly] (maybe they ran out of "interesting" ways for Kenny to die). I'm sure there is probably an official response from Trey Parker and/or Matt Stone (its creators) about the subject on some fan site/FAQ/forum out there.
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It is a well known good practice to use
StringBuilders instead of doing manystringconcatenations. Yet, I got really impressed when I saw a document telling to replace things like this:private const string SQL =
"SELECT " +
" ID, " +
" NAME, " +
" BIRTHDAY " +
"FROM " +
" TABLE " +
"WHERE " +
" NAME LIKE @PARAM";By creating the
StringBuildereverytime in the method where the SQL was being used. Maybe I am wrong :doh: , but I really believeconsts aren't doing bad string concatenations all the time. -
Why not do ? private const string SQL = @"SELECT ID, NAME, BIRTHDAY FROM TABLE WHERE NAME LIKE @PARAM"; It allows you to cut n paste the code into a SQL dev tool to test it and its easier to maintain without the extra quotes and +'s.
Because it was a coding horror.