Time spent in Looking for errors to reduce

Time spent in Looking for errors to reduce

Time spent in Looking for errors to reduce : Multi-thousand tips to make your life easier.

Learn more about the different errors in Search of the habits of Delphi developers, and as you search for bad habits you error faster and more efficient

(Originally published on Delphi-Expert.de 1 can be overcome. May 2004)

What's new?

We just released Castalia 2.3, the support for the new Delphi 8 for the Microsoft NET platform! You can find Details here.

Spend less time finding errors

In the context of our research, we discovered two common patterns among developers in the way that you find syntax errors. Developers who are not using Castalia tend to fall into two groups:

The first group writes a small amount of Code – a single line or a short, protecting group – and then Complile the Code, to ensure that it is compiled for.
If it can't be compiled, you fix the first syntax error and then recompile, and repeat the pattern until all the syntax errors will be fixed. Then move on to the next line, or a small group of lines, and compile again.

The second group will often write a significant amount of Code, whole classes or even complete units - and then you compile them. Very often, the Compiler will discover a number of syntax errors: missing semicolons, unmatched parenthesis mismatched begin... End blocks, misspelled IDs, etc.... The programmer will compile the first error fix then re-fixing the first error each Time, until there are no errors. He will then test the Code and if you are satisfied, move on.

We found that developers who Castalias syntax checking equipment used, the time spent in this cycle, compile-Read-Update-compile

To reduce the time required to Find faults, make sure that you are using Castalia's live syntax checking. This will draw a red wave line under Syntax that do not correspond to the lexical Delphi-Standard for the compilation. If you see a red wavy line, you know that something is wrong. If you can immediately identify what it is, put the Cursor in the word that is underlined, and a balloon hint will appear, what the Problem is tell you exactly. In the example here a semicolon in front of the underlined word.

Next week I will write about the results of our investigation on the way developers interact with and existing Code to navigate.