Natural Order Development

When asked what I do professionally I almost always answer "I'm a Software Sanitation Engineer, more commonly known as a Code Janitor." Many people chuckle at this, however, I have found that it explains my normal daily work to both technical and non-technical people very clearly. In fact anyone who has received an email from me will attest that there is a tag line attached regularly that reads: Let’s be honest "bugs" is a euphemism for developer malpractice.

In any other science than Information Technologies the scientists are taught and trained to be rigorous, disciplined, and to be aware of all the base exemplars for their area of study. Further, many pay attention and stay current with concepts that have been proven false. Knowing the fundamental proofs allow research to progress while avoiding many dead end twists and turns.

So what are the fundamental exemplars for software development?

• Basic Sort Algorithms
  • Bubble Sort
  • Heap Sort
  • Insertion Sort
  • Selection Sort
  • Merge Sort
  • Shell Sort
  • Quick Sort
  • Radix Sort
• Common Data Structures
  • Records
  • Linked List
  • Key-Value Stores
  • Arrays
  • Set of Sets
  • Stacks
  • Directed Graphs
  • Queues
• Design Patterns
  • Abstract Factory
  • Adapter
  • Bridge
  • Builder
  • Command
  • Composite
  • Decorator
  • Facade
  • Factory Method
  • Interpreter
  • Iterator
  • Mediator
  • Memento
  • Prototype
  • Proxy
  • Singleton
  • State
  • Strategy
  • Visitor
• Test Case Uses
  • Find defects
  • Maximize bug count
  • Block premature product releases
  • Help make ship / no-ship decisions
  • Minimize technical support costs
  • Assess conformance to specification
  • Conform to regulations
  • Minimize safety-related lawsuit risk
  • Find safe scenarios for use of the product
  • Assess quality
  • Verify correctness of the product
  • Assure quality
• Estimating Algorithms (The O() Notation)