Approach to coding, good/bad

[ichabod801]

Comments, good names, tests (manual and automatic), good documentation, and well factored code are all part of the process. They should all be taken into account. Leaving out any piece just brings a weakness to your code.

And opposed to test first programming, I prefer comment first programming. Write out the function signatures and class declarations, but instead of filling them with code, fill them with comments on how things are going to work. Make yourself think through everything that is going to happen, so you can see where the parts aren't going to work with each other. This allows you to fix a lot of problems without ever having to redo any code. It also makes writing the code tremendously easier.