The principles of SOLID programming, and their use in pratical development

Question

The company I work for has a small development team of five developers and our opinions on this matter vary widely from one colleague to another. We often have debates/discussions around software best practices, and its seems to me through this we usually end up somewhere in the middle. The product we work on is a SaaS and has been in production now for 5 years so parts of the code are in rougher shape then others. We try and schedule in time to allow us to do semi-major refactorings every few months and over the past year and a half I've really started to notice the code quality improve.

What are the communities thoughts and/or experiences on implementing software best practices in small to medium sized companies. What worked? What didn't work?

Answer 1

Don't waste time having debates/discussins - just do it! Yopu are in a small company? Take the responsibiliity and do what you know in your heart is the best thing.

Answer 2

It's important to try to foster good communication within your team and to get people excited about finding the best solutions. Keep the ego in check and work towards a common goal of high quality software.

Answer 3

The transfer to make is from a small group of good programmers that get the work done so that the company can grow. Once the company starts to grow, you need to start bringing principles in that enable you to hire new developers safely.

One simple method is to concentrate the refactoring to small areas of your codebase and build it up so you feel confident that you can hire a new developer and just drop them into it. Then as they take that part of the system on, your core developers can work on some of the other code.

Sooner or later your company is no longer small.

One of the biggest downfalls can be that you try hard to make it perfect and neglect the actual business. Working at something bit by bit is extremely reliable.

Sounds like what you're doing is just right. Just keep an eye on it at all times and step up the process as and when you really need to.