You're doing it wrong

Attention software developers: you're doing it wrong.

To be more specific, you need to be doing these things, and you're not.

Don't block the UI thread!

No matter what the application is, not matter what you're doing, do not block the UI! A "Please Wait" dialog or screen is trivial to code and makes the user experience so much better. You can never assume that an operation will always execute quick enough not to block. It always will under some scenario.

Catch everything!

There is no excuse (at least in the .NET world) to allow an exception to bubble up so far that the application crashes. There is always a way to catch exceptions at the highest level. Even if there's no way to recover, exit gracefully.

And don't restart the app without warning. Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio are big offenders here. If recycling is the only way to recover, fine, but don't just do it without telling me!

Always format numbers.

I'm so sick of having to squint at 41095809 and mentally insert the commas (or whatever the delimiter is in your culture). Having the code format this kind of output is so trivial. Software is supposed to make our lives easier. If you don't do this you have failed.

Don't confuse a pattern with a function.

Okay this one's not quite so obvious. There are times when you have to do a similar thing in lots of places. The natural inclination is to make this into a function/method/class. This is a good instinct! Don't repeat yourself! But it can be taken too far. Some things look similar but have enough differences that trying to create a generic base for them just makes the code way more complicated.

To put it another way, you wouldn't try to write one ForEach() function that handles all loop cases. It would quickly become a monster. Looping is a pattern, not a function.


Let's be clear: I have committed all these sins and will again. Learn from my fail, and we can all stop doing it wrong.