Re: Best Practices
- Posted by bill Jan 10, 2011
- 1484 views
I am thinking of writing something about the work I am doing at the moment. It is not something that is "interesing" but rather an inherently difficult problem that many programmers have to deal with.
The problem, simply stated, is how can we do data entry well? IE how can we ensure the names and addresses entered into a database are correct. The straight answer is we can not. But still we must try.
Discussing the problem is valuable because it is open-ended. No single technique works. Many common techniques (Regular expressions, Soundex, Metaphone, Edit distance ..) help with parts of it, other common techniques lose data unnecessarily.
Do you think this might be worth considering? Perhaps database is a bit mundane.
Personally I might say good practice is "try not to write code, good data design is better than pages of (probably buggy) code.
And again I might say "if the code looks verbose, unclear or defensive start again"
