There are a lot of differences between programming, and programming professionally. The most notorious of which, is deadlines.

Deadlines

When you’re writing code for yourself, you can spend as much (or as little time) on it as you please–but when you’re writing code for other people, you’ve got only a limited amount of time and resources to get the job done. In my experience, this typically leads to one of two situations:

• You’ve got to extend the deadline to finish the job properly.
• You’ve got to write some dirty hacks to finish the job.

If you’ve ever done professional programming, you know what I mean. Very few projects are agile enough to allow for both sufficient time and resources to get the job done. This leads to tough decisions for programmers.

No self-respecting programmer wants to deliver sub-par code; but it’s difficult to consistently deliver high-quality code when dealing with time obligations, especially in professional environments where you’re dealing with non-engineers who don’t necessarily understand the concept of technical debt.

Luckily, there are some guidelines you can follow to help minimize the amount of ‘hackery’ you have to do when writing code on a deadline. They aren’t necessarily quick-fixes, but can certainly be helpful to anyone who needs to consistently push out top-notch code, day after day.

Rule 1: Setup Continuous Deployment Before Writing ANY Code

This is a tip I picked up from The Pragmatic Programmer book (definitely required reading for any programmer). Always, and I mean always, setup your continuous deployment system before writing code.

What do I mean by continuous deployment? Well, before you start coding your project, you should have a system set up that lets you deploy your project code into production (and preferably staging and development environments as well). This way, as you write your code, you’ll have the peace of mind that comes with knowing your project can be deployed at any moment.

In a lot of programming work flows, this can save tons of development time. Instead of scp‘ing your project to some testing environment (or worse, coding directly on a live server), you can just push your code to your preferred source control system, and let your continuous deployment system take care of the rest. It may not seem like much of a time saver–but if you consider the amount of time it takes, day after day, to copy your code over and do testing manually, it can quickly add up and save hours of time each month.

Rule 2: Write Tests First

If you’ve never heard of test-driven development (TDD), please read the Wikipedia article on it immediately. If someone is paying you to write software, and you’ve got a deadline, then you need to be practicing TDD at all times.

The basic concept of test-driven development is that before writing project code, you write a simple piece of code that tests your hypothetical project code for desired behavior. For example, let’s say your project requires you to write a function that adds two numbers, and returns the sum of these numbers. Before writing that piece of code, you should write a test function, test_add_two_numbers, that calls your add_two_numbers function with various inputs, and verifies through assertions that the results you get back are proper.

This may seem like a bit of a hassle, but it has numerous benefits:

• Writing tests first help you clarify your application architecture.
• You have the peace of mind that comes with knowing your code is operational.
• You’re able to easily refactor parts of your project without worrying about breaking code.
• You can avoid releasing low-quality code, and tarnishing your reputation.

Writing tests certainly takes time and effort, but can save time in the long run by avoiding emergency bug-fixes, system crashes, etc. Especially when you’re on tight deadlines, you don’t want the added stress and worry of buggy code.

Rule 3: Be Transparent

Transparency can be difficult to achieve (depending on your work environment), but can be greatly beneficial.

In order to be transparent, you need to make sure that you have a clear line of communication with the clients receiving your code. You need to keep them updated regularly as to what is being worked on, and how far along progress is. Bonus points if you can continuously deploy your code to a staging system where clients can view the unfinished project and see how it is changing day after day.

If you’re able to maintain transparency with your boss(es), they’re much more likely to be understanding if deadlines need to be pushed back. Non-engineers often don’t understand software development, and view it as a black-box art. By maintaining clear communication and transparency with your clients, and getting them involved in the process, they’ll be more understanding of your work, and they’ll feel happier about the product they’re getting developed.

Rule 4: Maintain Daily TODO Lists

Time management is definitely out of the scope of this article, but I will mention that maintaining a daily TODO list is one of the best things you can do as a programmer to ensure things are progressing forward at all times.

Software development is an immensely complex task. It requires years of practice, patience, and discipline to become a good programmer, and you are never finished learning. When writing software on a deadline, more often than not, you’re writing a complex system. In order to keep your head clear, and allow you the maximum amount of programming power, you should maintain a daily TODO list consisting of each individual task that needs to be accomplished (code-wise) in the day.

Don’t make overly vague TODO items such as “debug sound problem”, really think it through, and write out the full task in numerous steps. For example:

• Write a unit test for the load_soundfile function that checks to see if mp3s are playable.
• Write a unit test for the load_soundfile function that checks to see if wav files crash when loading.
• Create new feature branch, design_update, to hold the new web design templates.
• Update style.css using the new web design templates.

Having a clear list of actionable items gives you the power to focus on a single task at a time, without having to balance 100 or so next-steps in your head. Writing software is complex enough already, don’t make your life more difficult!

Rule 5: Do the Right Thing

There will undoubtedly be circumstances that arise which make you nervous and uncomfortable. Did you procrastinate yesterday and skip writing the unit tests for your new features? When these situations arise, don’t go with your instinct. Instead–do the right thing.

Whether you need to double back and revisit some old code, write some more test cases, or even delay a deadline–do it. As a professional engineer, it’s your job to deliver working code consistently, even if that means you’ve got to make tough choices.

Conclusion

Being a software developer is no easy task. Our world is filled with constant challenge and hardship, and only our discipline and preparedness can help us push through the hard times, and prosper in the good times. Always use your best judgement, and beat the deadlines by using steadfast engineering practices, and never giving in to anything less.

You can do it.