Organizing Knowledge Generated in Software Development
For anyone that’s ever been responsible for working a website or software application that someone else has created, or for anyone that frequently works on developing a large piece of software, you’re likely to touch various pieces of code in that application. We’ve all got our own style of writing code, but given any major piece of software, there are going to be standard ways for creating certain types of objects.
For example, given any distributed web application, there is likely to be several ways to get information from the front end to the back end and have it replicated across all of the databases. For any desktop application, there are ways to correctly generate objects at runtime that will do exactly what you need them to do as opposed to creating giant objects are design time to cover every major scenario for your situation.
Obviously, and as with most things in programming, there are n-different ways to accomplish any given task; however, I firmly believe that well-designed software and good software engineering practices setup standard ways (or even frameworks) that are conducive to providing a correct way of accomplishing a task versus a way that works.
Ultimately, the longer you spend working on any large piece of software, the more likely you are to touch a wide breadth of areas in the code base. Additionally, you’re likely to hit varying degrees of depth in that code, as well. For every step across the code that you take and for every level deep in the code that you go, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to create a new object or refactor some existing code. Assuming that there is a standard way for creating to objects, integrating new features, or whatever else you may be doing, you’re going to be gaining experience with this area of the code. With that experience, you’re likely to be expected to be able to do something similar in the future.
What happens, though, in three months down the line when you’re neck deep in front-end development and you’ve just been asked to dive down into the application layer to develop some new code that will be responsible for translating information passed down from the front end and process it in some way before sending it over to the back end system? For some, no big deal - they’re gifted in that way. For others, they are likely to copy/paste from some similar code, patch it up, and release it. Copy/Paste is a terrible idea and, in my opinion, should never be done in almost any situation. Others may refer to some old notebook that they keep filed away from previous projects. Whatever works best for you is what you should do (except for Copy/Paste!).
Personally, I’ve been running a wiki on my local development box in which I keep all notes relative to nuances for various languages, framework notes, development techniques, and general reference notes that I come up with while working on aspect of a project. I’m a fan of doing this not only because it’s really easy to keep a web browser open on one monitor keeping notes based on code that’s open in an IDE on another monitor, but because it’s easier to organize than a notebook. Using links and a search engine beats bookmarks and skimming pages for me any day.
I like doing this because it prevents my file cabinet from getting too filled with stacks of notebooks, but it also rids me of the uncertainty of Is this the right way to do this? I can’t remember away and replaces it with Is this is the right way to do this? Let me check what I’ve done before. Generating knowledge in any given situation is always great, but it’s only as good as your ability to reuse it in the future. Keeping that information organized and easily accessible helps.
Just in case you’re wondering, I’ve been using Instiki and it has served me well. I’m not saying it’s the best or anything, but if you’re looking for something that is easy to setup and with which it is easier to interact, then I recommend it. Do you keep notes on various projects that you work on? What utilities do you use to help out with that?