Good working habits to observe in project development?
- by Will Marcouiller
As my development experience grows, I see fit to stick to best practices from here and there to build somehow my own working practices while observing the conventions, etc.
I'm currently working on a project which my goals is to graduate the security access model from an environment's Active Directory to another environment's automatically.
I don't know for any of you, but as far as I'm concerned, I meet some real difficulties sticking to only one way, then develop. I mean, I learn something new everyday while visiting SO, and recently wanted to get acquainted with generics.
On the other hand, I better know the Façade pattern which proved to be very practical in transactional programming in process systems. This seems to be less practical for desktop application as there are plenty of variables to consider in a desktop application that you don't have to care in transactional programming, as you're playing only with information data.
As for my current project, I have:
Groups;
Organizational Units;
Users.
Which are all considered an entry in the Active Directory. This points out to be a good candidate for generics, as also approached this way by Bart de Smett's Linq to AD on CodePlex. He has a DirectorySource<T>, and to manage let's say groups, then he instantiate a source with the proper type:
var groups = new DirectorySource<Group>();
This seems to be very a good way of doing. Despite, I seem to go from one pattern to another and I don't seem to be able to strictly stick to one. While I'm aware that one must not stay with only one way of doing, since each pattern statisfies certain advantages, while also illustrating disadvantages under some usage conditions, I seem to want to develop with both patterns having a singleton Façade class with the underlying factories which represent the sub systems:
GroupsFactory;
UsersFactory;
OrganizationalUnitsFactory.
Each of the factories offers the possible operations for their respective entity (group, user, OU).
To make a very long story short, I often have plenty of ideas while developping and this causes me some trouble, as I go from an idea to another feeling completely lost after a while. Yet I understand the advantages and disavantages, I have no trouble choosing from one pattern to another depending on the situation. Nevertheless, when it comes to programming itself, if I'm not part of a team, I feel sometimes like I can't do anything good. That is, because I can't stand not doing something "perfect" the first time. The role I play within the project is both: the project manager and the programmer. I am more comfortable in the project manager role, architectural role, analytical role than the developer's.
Has any of you some good habbits to observe in project development?
Thanks to you all! =)
