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Things aspiring Software Engineers should know - V
As a Software Developer, I started my journey in the Software Industry at Novell from where I moved to Citrix and later to Amazon. Being in this industry for close to 6 years now, I have met and learnt from many wonderful intellectuals and have worked with them on various top class products that directly or indirectly impact billions of lives worldwide.
I have experienced diverse corporate cultures, working environments, software development practices and processes. During this journey where I accomplished some distinguished feats and also committed many silly mistakes, I have learnt lot of things of which I think some should be helpful and of interest to the aspiring Software Engineers. You may check out the points mentioned in the previous articles in this series. Here is another one-
Know the boundaries and cover them
It's easy to write a piece of code that works, to write what doesn't break is where the challenge lies. When writing code, you must make sure that not only it has all the corner cases covered but also exits gracefully, if at all it has to. Not doing so can cause application to randomly crash and even lose data, which can badly impact the end user of the product.
I have experienced diverse corporate cultures, working environments, software development practices and processes. During this journey where I accomplished some distinguished feats and also committed many silly mistakes, I have learnt lot of things of which I think some should be helpful and of interest to the aspiring Software Engineers. You may check out the points mentioned in the previous articles in this series. Here is another one-
Know the boundaries and cover them
It's easy to write a piece of code that works, to write what doesn't break is where the challenge lies. When writing code, you must make sure that not only it has all the corner cases covered but also exits gracefully, if at all it has to. Not doing so can cause application to randomly crash and even lose data, which can badly impact the end user of the product.
As an interviewer, I find it really surprising to come across so many candidates who find it difficult to spot and handle conditions where the code would miserably fail. No points for guessing that such people do not make it through the interview process. A good software engineer can identify certain errors or bugs in the code just by going through it. The key to be able to do that is just one word - practice!
My sincere suggestion for you regarding this point would be to,
1. Start coding on your own if you are not already doing so, and
2. Start practicing identifying or spotting the areas of code where anomalies may arise.
3. Writing code to handle such situations or at least make a graceful exit.
This is one of the things that I seriously think an aspiring Software Engineer should know. Keep watching for more. If you are keen on learning more about the better software development practices you can start following right from the college days, do get a copy of my first book "Hello World - Student to Software Professional" published by Partridge (A Penguin Random House Company). Now available worldwide on all the MAJOR ONLINE Stores - Amazon, Google Play, Flipkart, Barnes & Noble and many others.
My sincere suggestion for you regarding this point would be to,
1. Start coding on your own if you are not already doing so, and
2. Start practicing identifying or spotting the areas of code where anomalies may arise.
3. Writing code to handle such situations or at least make a graceful exit.
This is one of the things that I seriously think an aspiring Software Engineer should know. Keep watching for more. If you are keen on learning more about the better software development practices you can start following right from the college days, do get a copy of my first book "Hello World - Student to Software Professional" published by Partridge (A Penguin Random House Company). Now available worldwide on all the MAJOR ONLINE Stores - Amazon, Google Play, Flipkart, Barnes & Noble and many others.
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Any facts, figures or references stated here are made by the author & don't reflect the endorsement of iU at all times unless otherwise drafted by official staff at iU. This article was first published here on 26th April 2014.
