Project Development Guide

fivos.doganis@gmail.com

K eep

I t

S imple

S tupid

!= Easy

Y ou

A in't

G onna

N eed

I t

Code for now,
not for the future.
Refactor often.

D on't

R epeat

Y ourself

!= WET :

Write Everything Twice

No Copy Paste!

Copy Paste == Code Debt

Copy Paste == Refactoring Opportunity

Copy Paste

Stop!

Think

Refactor Now!

Fighting procrastination

• OK to fail
  • "Die and retry" Code and refactor
• Decompose into micro actions
  • Github issues + tags ("easy", "good first issue", etc.)
• Start just for 5 minutes
  • identify easy issue
  • fix it to get the ball rolling
• Adjust skills and difficulty to stay in the zone

Use objective criteria

Affordance

Form function

• button
• door knob
• hammer

Discoverability

• user guesses right

Juice

More than eye-candy

• action continuity

• smoother experience (TWEEN / lerp)

  • Robert Penner's equations

• user satisfaction

  • reward mechanism

• avoid bad juice

  • distracting, unexpected

The laws of UX

Fitts's law

Find measurable KPIs*

Examples

• How long does the user take to reach the target?
• How many mistakes are made before succeeding at a task?
• How accurate is the result vs a reference?

Design Patterns

• Builder, Observer, State can be interesting
• avoid Singletons!
• adapt the pattern to your code, don't use as-is!

Game Programming Patterns

• Game Loop
• Object Pool

AntiPatterns

ECS

Entity Component System

Articles

• Mozilla
• Medium
  • ECS in 99 lines of code
• ECS @ Apple (Video 25')
• used in Overwatch

Self documenting code

• document the "why?"
  • at high-level
  • if needed
• avoid documentation altogether
  • write tests, examples, tutorials instead
  • write code as documentation

Code as documentation

• BAD

const float a = 9.81; //gravitational force
float b = 5; //time in seconds
float c = (1/2)*a*(b^2) //multiply the time and gravity together to get displacement.

• GOOD

float computeDisplacement(float timeInSeconds) {
   const float gravitationalForce = 9.81;
   float displacement = (1 / 2) * gravitationalForce * (timeInSeconds ^ 2);
   return displacement;
}

Naming Conventions

• "What is this object? What does it do?"
• Object, variable noun
  • user, accountNumber, customerEmail
• Function, method verb
  • user.login(), shutDown()
• Boolean adjective
  • allowed, disabled
  • user.active()
  • user.isActive()

Naming tips

• convey intention
  var d // elapsed time in days vs var elapsedTimeInDays
• name arguments too!
  void copyChars(char a1[], char a2[])
void copyChars(char source[], char destination[])
• pronunciation (avoid abbreviations)
  genymdms vs generationTimestamp
• no magic numbers (keep your code searchable and maintainable)
  s / 5 vs task / WORK_DAYS_PER_WEEK
• use camelCase