Input validation is the kind of thing that sounds easy on the surface but then gets weirdly hard to implement and maintain effectively as the app grows. You may find validation code ends up getting copied or spread across the application. People get used to it and it just becomes “the way it must be”. Except… it doesn’t need to be that way. You CAN centralize ALL of your validation logic in one place while keeping it flexible enough to use with any input source.
Let the code speak for itself!
Easy to read code is especially important when it’s a business’s bread and butter. There are only so many hours in a day a developer can spend working on a piece of software so it makes sense to focus the developer’s efforts on value generating activities like writing new code or fixing bugs, to move the business forward faster. Time spent trying to figure out existing code is a cost the business will want to minimize.
How to be a great code reviewer
Do you like putting your code up for review? Many developers I’ve worked with tell me they don’t. But if criticism is something developers are supposed to welcome, why the negative attitude? Well, my guess is they’ve probably gotten a lot of crummy feedback from cruddy reviewers. I’ve been there, on both sides. I want to share a few ideas and bits of advice I’ve put together from experience. What I’ve found is that the smoothness of a code review is not based entirely on the reviewers’ actions; the review requester can sometimes set themselves up for failure. My tips for both reviewers and review requesters are explained below.
OpenID Connect: The rest of the story
Suppose you’re trying to implement some form of single sign-on (SSO) for your website. You see those cool “sign in with Google” or “sign in with Facebook” buttons on other websites and you decide this is the experience you want to provide visitors of your own website but you’re not really sure how to do it. You read some friendly web articles on OIDC but feel like you’re not getting the big picture. This was me when I first started learning about OAuth. I hope this post will give you the missing pieces I wish I’d had.
Code workout: Slim down those interfaces
See how typical web controller code can be broken down into bite sized chunks by following SOLID principles. The result is a decoupled architecture that’s highly resistant to unnecessary maintenance as your application evolves, saving you time and headache in the long run.