Software Development Category content as of 03/31/2025 Home Click a title or thumbnail to go to a post. Click an arrow to expand or collapse a category. Four Common Mistakes Aspiring Developers Make Should software developers understand how operating systems work? What are the signs that you’re a skilled software developer? You know you’re not a beginning software engineer when....NET Framework How do I control where Debug.WriteLine debug output goes in C#?Best Practice How can we write software that won’t be labeled “legacy code” too early? Think before you type – variable names and other entities Why would my team ever need coding standards or guidelines? Writing Code that Humans Can UnderstandCode Reviews 7 Steps to Keeping Your Emotions in Check during Code ReviewsDocumentation Why don't developers write documentation?Maintainability Does developing maintainable code really matter? Should abbreviations and acronyms be avoided as identifiers in source code? Why should I add comments to my code?Program Organization Should I obscure my source code to make it more secure? What's the point of callback functions?C and C++ Languages Are C and C++ still relevant and are they worth learning? Can I return more than one thing from a C or C++ function? Death of the Register Keyword May Be Greatly Exaggerated Disabling Warnings from Legacy and Third-Party Header Files Is “C/C++” a thing? What is the maximum value of an int in C, C++, and C#? What is the third parameter I sometimes see defined in the main function? Why do I often see int instead of bool returned by Boolean functions in C and C++? Why don’t they add a garbage collector to new versions of C and C++?Code Optimization Are compilers really better than human programmers at optimizing code? Loop unrolling as a symptom of premature optimization What is code hoisting?Data Structures and Algorithms Are linked lists slower or faster than arrays? Can data structures and algorithms be implemented in assembly language?Programming Languages Do all programming languages compile into the same machine code? How long does it take to become proficient at ALL programming languages? How long does it take to build a great programming language? Why are you still programming in language X? Why not switch to Y? Why do people still use Python, C, C++, C#, and Java when there is Go?Programming ParadigmsObject-Oriented Programming Is OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) dying?Project Management Do software developers always have hard deadlines for their projects? Is project “crunch time” a lifestyle choice?Software Testing My Big Fat Rookie Mistake as a Software Design Engineer Why is invalid input testing important? Isn't valid input testing sufficient?The Business of Software How do I know when my software product is ready to release?Career Advice for Software Engineers 12 Tips for Software Engineers to Climb the Corporate Ladder Why do some developers advise new developers to ignore using Microsoft Windows?The C Programming Language Does the free function make a pointer NULL in C? How to Get the Ceiling of an Integer Division in C Is C a high-level language or a low-level language? Is the C language outdated and obsolete? What do we mean by portability of C language source code? What’s the difference between _Bool and bool in C? What’s the one thing you should never do with a NULL pointer? Why C Variadic Functions Need a Required First Parameter Why do some experienced C developers avoid certain features of C99 and later standards?The C++ Programming Language Friend Classes in C++ In C++, when should I use a class vs a struct? What happened to the .h in C++ header files? What would happen if a bitwise operator like ^ were applied to objects of a C++ user-defined class? Which is faster in C++: call by value, call by reference, or call by pointer? Why doesn’t C++ support variable length arrays (VLAs)? Will a game engine in Python be slower than one written in C++?Visual Studio How to Set Up Visual Studio Community 2017 for C Programming How to Set Up Visual Studio Community 2022 for C Programming Keeping the Console Window Open in Visual Studio 2017 Mapping Visual Studio Products to Version NumbersWindows Programming Getting the Windows Screen Resolution in C