Encodo White Papers Archive

This article is a copy of the white papers and process description that I wrote for Encodo Systems while I still worked there. I’ve preserved a copy of it here and in the linked articles.

Through our many years of experience building software, we’ve accumulated methodologies and principles that lead to quality software.

• The experience and know-how we bring to our consulting services also make us excellent partners in development-process consulting.
• We have experience in reviewing existing software and proposing changes to improve its reliability and stability.
• Not only can we build great software for you, we can help your development teams improve their current software and teach them how to write better software in the future.

Listed below are our methodologies.

DI, IOC and Containers (2019)

Applications are graphs of components, each with dependencies and inputs and outputs. DI and IOC are a simple and powerful way of building testable, flexible and easily replaced components.

Clean and Safe Code (2019)

A large part of writing good, clean code is to restrict your options. Avoid nullable data. Avoid mutable data. Avoid state. Code is not a poem: it’s actually preferable if it all looks the same and seems “easy” and “obvious”.

Testing as First-Class Citizen (2019)

Use tests to execute your code. Automate them to guard against future changes. Make testing easy for developers by building nice integration suites. Tests are code.

Code Reviews (2017)

Finished code is reviewed before it is committed. Reviews make sure that the other parts of the design process were followed (documentation, tests, etc.) and that errors are fixed as quickly as possible.

Document Everything (2017)

Software without documentation is not maintainable. Good naming conventions, logical designs and well-built tests help make code self-documenting. High-level tutorials explain how the different components are intended to work together.

Continuous Integration and Delivery (2017)

Low-overhead releases lead to faster turnaround and higher quality. Automated (or nightly) builds pinpoint software errors before they can become problems.

Component-based Design (2006)

Components encapsulate specifications. Software is designed to balance reuse and abstraction against the project goals, all the while optimizing maintainability.

Design by Contract (2006)

The specifications are built right into the code. Software publishes its assumptions instead of leaving its contract implicit.

Test-driven Development (2006)

Tests are a central part of building software. All component features have application-independent tests which can be run automatically and throughout development.