Coding with the other side of your brain

Digg Muti Delicious

This might seem like a weird topic for a blog post. Let me elaborate.

If you’ve ever coded for a sys­tem that is build in a con­ven­tion you’re not used to (for example, cod­ing using a MVC frame­work, if you’re not used to it), this concept will begin to make sense. It refers to the almost com­plete paradigm shift required when approach­ing an unfa­mil­iar cod­ing frame­work or sys­tem. Here are a few things that I’ve found ease the pro­cess of cod­ing with the other side of your brain.

1. Find people who code using the other side of their brain, more often.

Knowing one or two people who are used to the par­tic­u­lar envir­on­ment in which you are cod­ing can be invalu­able. It’s most use­ful, I believe, with those smal­ler tweaks and refine­ments that you may need to make… or the small and unex­pec­ted bugs in your code.

2. If the sys­tem has a user guide, keep it open.

User guides can often be bloated and unus­able. If the doc­u­ment­a­tion has a func­tion ref­er­ence and a brief explan­a­tion of the con­cepts behind the sys­tem, you’ve got it.

3. Pay atten­tion to cod­ing conventions.

If the ori­ginal design­ers of the sys­tem are cod­ing in a par­tic­u­lar con­ven­tion, stick to it. There’s usu­ally a reason for the con­ven­tion and stick­ing to it will save you time and poten­tial future re-​​coding anyways.

4. Try to lay as much ground­work as pos­sible before integ­rat­ing the sys­tem with your code.

Pay atten­tion to the finer details of the sys­tem and try to view the sys­tem on a more abstract level. This will enable you to see the big­ger pic­ture and to code or style any areas you may need to back-​​track and do at a later stage.

I hope these short tips are use­ful. If you have any to add, please add them in the com­ments. :)

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