Programming Practices

[Ed_P]

Hello

I just wanted to get the opinions of those of you who have experience developing C# applications and programming in general. I currently am learning the basics of programming (choosing C# as the language of choice) and have developed simple applications to work with Access/SQL databases. I have accomplished all tasks that I wanted to with the small but simple applications...learned alot about the syntax and logic used in C# an programming in general. However I feel as though I my applications, as trivial as they are could be better

My question to all who wish to provide some feedback on this topic is what can I do to help me become more proficient in programming (no in C# but in any OOP language). Things that I would like to do create an application that can have features or bug fixed later on by using service packs or hotfixes. With my current applications I only have one EXE file that will launch the app, I would like to see if I could maybe break this up with different dll's to be used by the application to make it more easy to manage and upgrade for future use. Making the application use less memory (for the small c# applications), etc

Can anyone give me any resources on the net or books that I can use. I have thought about looking over some of these open source products that you can join to develop the software, but this seems out of my league right now. In a nutshell, anything that anyone in here can provide me with to get me more experience in programming (using C# and .NET specifically) will be great

Thanks In Advance

Ed P.

[William Ryan eMVP]

Hi Ed_P:
"Ed_P" <an*******@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:01**********************************@microsof t.com...

Hello,

I just wanted to get the opinions of those of you who have experience developing C# applications and programming in general. I currently am
learning the basics of programming (choosing C# as the language of choice)
and have developed simple applications to work with Access/SQL databases. I
have accomplished all tasks that I wanted to with the small but simple
applications...learned alot about the syntax and logic used in C# an
programming in general. However I feel as though I my applications, as
trivial as they are could be better.

No matter how long you program, you should always have this feeling about
your code. The worst thing that can happen to a programmer is if he/she
starts falling in love with their code, become convinced that their way is
the only way or the best way and quits question what they do and why they do
it. If there's ever a profession that you should constantly get better at,
it's this one.
My question to all who wish to provide some feedback on this topic is what can I do to help me become more proficient in programming (no in C# but in
any OOP language). Things that I would like to do create an application
that can have features or bug fixed later on by using service packs or
hotfixes. With my current applications I only have one EXE file that will
launch the app, I would like to see if I could maybe break this up with
different dll's to be used by the application to make it more easy to manage
and upgrade for future use. Making the application use less memory (for the
small c# applications), etc.
Can anyone give me any resources on the net or books that I can use. I have thought about looking over some of these open source products that you
can join to develop the software, but this seems out of my league right now.
In a nutshell, anything that anyone in here can provide me with to get me
more experience in programming (using C# and .NET specifically) will be
great!

There are soo many it'd actually be hard to go wrong. Let me just start
with a few things though. You often hear people talking about breaking up
code into 'layers', you hear about the presentation layer, the data access
layer etc. By and large, the first thing you want to do is seperate your UI
from your business logic. If nothing else, make sure you do this. I'll
explain in a second. now, people often talk about business logic as this
monolithic thing, but depending on how it's built, this may include your
data access code, part of your data access code, your communications layer
if applicable etc. Then you can break it up further by using the database
backend. I have an app that's one of the better pieces of code that I've
built. It's scaled well and user requests are always coming and changing..
originallly people might have loved a feature but now that they have it they
take it for granted and want more. This particular app is a web app, so if I
had the Data access logic in the appliccation or behind the ui, every time I
changed a query, I'd have to rebuild the project and redeploy it. This
would cause someone to have to load it on the web server at a minimum so if
I did this a lot, it would be a real inconvenience. I could easily ask for
a password and account, but in today's environment of increased security
threats, many sysadmins don't want any unncessary accounts out there and
they don't want to grant permissions that aren't necessary.

I implemented this with a data access layer, a business logic layer and the
ui. The data access layer calls stored procedures, and those stored
procedure names are stored in a db related to user accounts. So, all my
data access layer does is find out what proc it needs and then calls it.
More times than I can count users have wanted something cosmetic changed
that would otherwise require a recompile. However, while on the phone I can
change the logic in the stored proc, hit save, have them refersh their page
(which causes a new page view) and right before their eyes their changes are
in effect. I'm still involved in the process, but due to security concerns
and govt regs, we are limited in how much we can do without actually
requesting a faxed permission first. Think about it if you were a user..
you want something changed. In one case i'd have to make the change, wait
for someone from networking to come over and copy it, and then you could
have your changes. Optimistically it'd take 10 minutes but it coudl take a
lot more (if everyone in networking was busy restoring a drive controller
that just crashed or was at lunch). so 10+ minutes compared to real time
changes while you are on the phone.

This is just one example/benefit of seperating your logic. So the first
thing you need to do is code everything with the assumption that it will
change. Hard code nothing. Find a mechanism, database, web service
whatever that you can store this stuff in so you can change it without
having to rebuild the app. Tell yourself that each time you rebuild app,
it's bad b/c you are taking a stable system and possibly injecting
instability into it.

The same logic holds for .dlls'. If my UI is sound, and I need to change my
data access layer to point somewhere else, if I recompile the whole app, I
may have introduced some other subtle bug (that's not to say that you can't
still screw things up, but you are limiting the scope of what you can
break). So break things up as small as logically sensible. Think about
real life objects. Your car for instance. If you had to have the car
rebuilt and sent back to the car factory to change a flat tire, you'd be
mad.So by building it in pieces that resemble nouns, you simulate this. If
your car object had 4 tire objects, each tire had a rim object etc, you
could easily change one thing with minimal exposure to your other object.
What would be the risk to your seat objects if you reimplemented the Rim
object? very little. So when you are building your objects, always ask
"will this change easily if I need it to" and does this object make logical
sense?

You'll also need to undestand events, methods and properties, and once
again, model them with the same thought of real world objects. If you had a
human object, would breathe be an event, method or property? This is pretty
easy but other things may be more complex. You'll always want to ensure
that you have as very little code behind your forms... if you have a lot of
stuff there, you know you are doing something wrong.

Then I'd get a few books on OOP, look on amazon and find some that have many
good reviews. OOP is a mature subject so there will be a good amount of
feedback. Then get a book or two on .NET (or 20) and OOP and .NET in
particular. You'll probably want at least on (like David Sceppa's ADO.NET
core reference or Bill Vaughn's ADO ADO.NET Best practices) data access.
You'll probably want a book on the backend db you are using too.

Most every .NET book will have a discussion of deployment, and check out
Zero Touch deployment on google. This will help you out immensely.

It's a little late but I'll post a list of books I really liked.

And by all means, ask people questions and look at code .. look at exampels
on web sites and see what you like and dislike about it. Over time your
style will devevlop and you'll probably use techniques from many different
people.

HTH,

Bill
Thanks In Advance!

Ed P.

[Ed_P]

William

Thanks for all your feedback, it truly is appreciated I'll take all of your suggestions in to consideration...I think one of my things that really gets to me is that even though I know the features that certain programming languages have I always think to myself that I am not doing things (or using those features) correctly...am I using them effectively or how can I use them for other things.

Thanks for your feedback!