1. Software Best Practices
Peter Mosca
April, 2007

2. What are Best Practices?
Repeatable processes and techniques that have been shown to be effective ways to solve common problems.
Reduce risk.
Software Best Practices

3. Design Patterns
Standard solutions to common problems in software design.
Have been proven time and again.
Software Best Practices

4. Design Patterns Singleton – there can only be one
Factory – abstracts object creation
MVC – Model View Controller
Advanced Features:
Full Object Orientation
Extensible into Domain-Specific Languages
Software Best Practices

5. Model View Controller
Software Best Practices

6. Version Control Allows you to move backward in time
Allows multiple developers simultaneous access to source code
Branching avoids code freezes
All documents – not just source code – should be placed under version control
Subversion and CVS
Ruby on Rails is the “killer app” for Ruby
Software Best Practices

7. Unit Tests Tests a small portion of code
An application will have LOTS of unit tests
Also serves as a level of documentation
Test-first development becoming more embraced in the field
JUnit for Java
David Heinemeier Hansson worked for 37 Signals in Denmark
Software Best Practices

8. Continuous Builds
The entire application automatically compiled on a regular bases
Unit Tests are automatically run
Should be automatically run whenever anyone changes source code
Cruise Control
Full-Stack: the components are integrated so that bridges between them do not need to be set up manually
Software Best Practices

9. Summary Best Practices help mitigate risk
Best Practices enable you to embrace change
describe the rebellion against the fallacy of objective software. That software should be as configurable as possible from the outset to allow every user to bend it exactly to their needs.
Flexibility is overrated.
Software Best Practices