Coding Horror links

• Is Your Database Under Version Control?

  The database is a critical part of your application. If you deploy version 2.0 of your application against version 1.0 of your database, what do you get? A broken application. And that's why your database should always be under source control right next to your application code. You deploy the app, and you deploy the database. Like peanut butter and chocolate, they are two great tastes that taste great together.

• Cool Gifts for Geeks: 2006 Edition
• PowerPoint presentations
• Code smells
• The Last Configuration Section Handler.. Revisited
• FizzBuzz

So I set out to develop questions that can identify this kind of developer and came up with a class of questions I call "FizzBuzz Questions" named after a game children often play (or are made to play) in schools in the UK. An example of a Fizz-Buzz question is the following:

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz".

Most good programmers should be able to write out on paper a program which does this in a under a couple of minutes. Want to know something scary? The majority of comp sci graduates can't. I've also seen self-proclaimed senior programmers take more than 10-15 minutes to write a solution.

• When Understanding Means Rewriting

  It's not that developers want to rewrite everything; it's that very few developers are smart enough to understand code without rewriting it.

• How Not To Become a Rockstar Programmer

  The only way to get better at writing code is to write code. So study "good code*" all you want, but write as much code as you can.

• The Ultimate Code Kata

  It's an important distinction [between doing your programming job and practicing programming]. I may drive to work every day, but I'm far from a professional driver. Similarly, programming every day may not be enough to make you a professional programmer. So what can turn someone into a professional driver or programmer? What do you do to practice?