Purpose: Tcl is not just a language for the experienced programmer.  This page is intended as a location where experienced programmers can provide general programming tips to those with less experienced.

Learning from the mistakes of others is the sign of a lazy (or, in other words, productive <wink>) programmer...

The first items I have are a few truisms that I ran across that were written by
[Dan Sugalski] on the perl 5 porters mailing list.  They have nothing to do with perl in general and a LOT to do with good ideas for programmers!


   * Do The Right Thing, even if you don't want to.
   * Assume the person who'll need to maintain your code owns an axe and isn't afraid to use it
   * If you think something's terribly clever that's a good sign you shouldn't do it.
   * Don't take shortcuts to be cute or lazy.
   * Names are important! You're not called "x", so why should your variables
   * Pick a coding style and stick with it, even if you don't like it. If the program exists, use its style.
   * Things are only optional if it's painfully obvious what's going on without them. Parenthesis, generally speaking, aren't optional. Neither are meaningful comments.

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Another good resource are various books by [Brian Kernighan], one of my favorite authors to read.
For example, "The Elements of Programming Style". (Listed as out of print at amazon.com [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0070342075].)

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I recently gave one of our interns Kernighan and Plauger's "Software Tools" [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020103669X/christophernelso] with the comment "This may be the best book ever on software engineering." -- CLN