CodeQuality Archives - Software Quality Blog

DateTime.Now: Usage, Examples, Best Practices, and Pitfalls

February 26, 2019Carlos Schults3

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For many developers, their first experience handling time in C# is by using DateTime.Now.

When needing to retrieve the current date and time, they’d search for it, reaching a StackOverflow question or some documentation page by Microsoft. They’d quickly find that the way you get the current instant is by using the “DateTime.Now.” They’d go back to their code, use the property, and be done with it.

Also, for many developers, the scenario described above is the extent of their education about DateTime.Now. This isn’t good. Why?

Well, time is one of the trickiest topics in programming. Not knowing about its intricacies can get you into trouble. We’re here to help avoid that, by taking a look at the dos and don’ts of DateTime.Now.

We’re going to cover what DateTime.Now is the basics of its use. Then we’ll go a bit deeper, showing some more advanced usage scenarios (i.e. output formatting), covering the best practices you should employ and also the pitfalls you must be aware of when working with this property.

Let’s get started.

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Code Contracts: A Technique to Cut Down on Bugs

January 15, 2019Carlos Schults2

Two Hands Handshake signifying code contracts Rent, employment, house buying: you name it. If you’re an adult, chances are that you’ve signed several contracts in your life (and will probably sign many more). A contract is an agreement that defines the rights and obligations of two or more parties in order to accomplish something.

Having a proper contract in place is a powerful tool to clear doubts about what you’re allowed or not allowed to do to the apartment you live at, for instance. A contract also defines penalties for the parties that fail to fulfill their part of the agreement. If you don’t put down your house payments when they’re due, you’re pretty much guaranteed to suffer some consequences.

Contracts are everywhere in the real world. But what would it look like if we could use something similar to contracts in our code? For instance, what if we could specify “clauses” that defined the conditions required at the start and end of a function? Or maybe that specified and enforced the invariants of our objects? In this case, I’d say our programs would definitely improve in readability, safeness,?and self-documentation.

And now, what if I told you something like this already exists?

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“String Was Not Recognized as a Valid DateTime.” Why It Happens and How to Avoid It.

December 18, 2018Carlos SchultsNo Comments

Ah…error messages.

Sometimes very useful, other times not so much, but always present in a developer?s life. And that?s what today?s post is about.

Not ?error messages? in general, but one message in particular: ?String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.?

Datetime mistake: string not recognized as valid datetime.

As a developer, you?re pretty much guaranteed to have to write code that handles date and time. Which means you?re also bound to have some problems while parsing strings to DateTime values, and that?s what this post will cover.

We?ll start out by talking about the causes of the issue. You’ll learn about globalization and how big a role it plays in the consistency and correction of your application. Then, we?ll close with practical advice on what you can do to prevent such problems from happening in the first place.

Let?s get started!

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Automated Code Reviews: 5 Manual Checks You Can Automate

December 4, 2018Mark HenkeNo Comments

I am curious about how infrequent automated code reviews seem to be in the workplace. As software?developers, we pride ourselves on our ability to automate?away other people’s problems. Much of what we do is scrutinizing manual work done?by our customers?or business?stakeholders. We find tasks that could be performed more efficiently, automate them, and the customer hopefully praises our efforts.

Yet it seems?that we rarely scrutinize our own work. Manual code reviews run rampant on many software teams. We take our “expert opinion” and turn it into either a mental or written checklist. Then we apply the checklist through manual labor, looking over one file at a time. Oftentimes we miss things; perhaps we’re tired or distracted by other tasks.

Why not do to our own processes what we do to others: automate them? After all, computers will be better at handling some of these checklist items than we are.

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How Much Time Do Programmers Spend Debugging? Too Much

November 27, 2018Mark Henke1

We’ve all been in that situation where you’re streaming along, banging out some sick code for a new feature. You’re excited to see how many minds you’ll blow when you demo it. And then you see a blip on your radar. Something is going wrong with your production system. Oh no. You give it a cursory look and you realize you don’t understand what’s going on. At this point, you know your day is shot. Why? Because you already know you’ll need to spend too much time debugging.

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4 Reasons Why We Need Code Comments

November 13, 2018Mark HenkeNo Comments

Why do we need code comments? I would not be surprised if your first answer is, “We don’t.”

I get it. Senior developer after senior developer has taught us that “comments are bad.” And we cheerfully nod our heads, saying, “I am smarter for not using them.” We grin smugly when we see one of our juniors make the “mistake” of using comments in their code.

But as much as we sometimes abuse them, we still need comments.

I know comments don’t affect the code’s behavior. I understand how they can get stale and stop making sense. I am all for writing clean code, and I do my best to ensure my variables, methods, and class names describe their intent as accurately as possible. If I see dead code lying around in the comments for a while, I delete it.

But here is the bottom line: we need code comments because there are some things they do better than plain code. Here’s why.

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Should You Hold Spelling Errors Against Developers?

October 16, 2018Eric GoebelbeckerNo Comments

You’re checking out some code. It’s been a long time since you looked at this project. Or maybe it’s the first time. You point your editor at an interesting file name and double-click to open it. Your coffee is warm, your mind is clear, and you’re ready to go.

And there it is, sticking out like white socks in sandals. A spelling error.

How do you handle it? Do you fix it? Do you ignore it? Discuss it with the author? Bring it up during lunch when he’s not around?

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C# Switch Statement: What Is It, How to Use It, and Why You Should Beware

October 9, 2018Carlos Schults1

Time to cover yet another construct of the C# language. In this series, we’ve already covered the C# list, array, and string, to name a few. Today’s post is a little bit different, though. Its subject isn’t a data structure or type, but instead, a decision structure: the C# switch statement.

In this post you’ll learn all about the switch statement. What is it, how should you use it, and when should be careful using it?

Le’s get started!

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Treat Warnings As Errors. I Mean It. You Need to Do This

October 2, 2018Carlos Schults6

We here on the SubMain blog love to talk about programming best practices.?Sometimes we’ll cover topics that are specific to C# or .NET as a whole. Other times, however, we write about concepts that are universal. Today’s post falls into the latter category. And I’ll start out by making a strong claim: you absolutely should treat warnings as errors when developing in .NET. Well, to be honest, that applies to virtually any platform.

The examples in this post, as usual, will be in the C# language.?But as we’ve said, the concept applies pretty much everywhere.

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Code Review Prep: 4 Tips to Eliminate Inefficiency

September 25, 2018Carlos SchultsNo Comments

Code review is, hands down, one of the most fundamental best practices a software shop can employ to produce better software. A good code review practice can shed light on design problems, improve the readability of the code, and spread knowledge throughout a team. It also helps you find bugs early (when it costs less to fix them).

Code reviews sound like a gift from the heavens, right? While far from being a panacea, I’d say they are a spectacular tool to ensure software quality?when done correctly. And that, of course, is the tricky part. It doesn’t take much for a code review practice to go downhill. If you’ve been a developer for at least a few years, then I’d bet you have your share of scary stories to tell.

But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. Forget the truly horrific stories?toxic workplaces and the like. Today we’re going to cover inefficiency in code reviews. Or, more precisely, we’ll offer you tips on how you can avoid it.

So, without further ado, let’s get to it: four tips that will help you when preparing to implement a code review practice in your software shop.

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