---
title: "Bolsters Code-Related Rants (An ongoing collection)"
url: "http://andrewbolster.info/2011/02/bolsters-code-related-rants-an-ongoing-collection/"
date: "2011-02-12T18:21:53Z"
tags: ["Opinion","Programming","Rant","Development","File Management","Version Control"]
categories: ["Commentary"]
---

![FFFFFFUUUUUUUU](http://kissmyalas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/RageFace.jpg)

- Logging functions being called with just a variable and no comment as to **what the hell it is**
- *logging* has functions more than logging.info, **use them!**
  
  - *Debug* = **useful** information if something **breaks** but isn’t interesting during normal operation
  - *info* = useful and generally **interesting** information
  - *warn* = something went **wrong**, indicating something should probably be refactored / fixed,_ but the system could recover from it._
  - *error* = **oh dear jesus fuck the entire site evaporated into a swarm of zombie locusts, I better put something in the error log.**
- Commented out historical code! Using a version control system means you can go back to **any** point in the history of the codebase and see how we used to do something; you don’t need dozens of lines of extraneous code ‘just in case’
- **Checking in inoperable code to the default branch** (I know I’m guilty of this sometimes too). If major changes to one section are being made, do it in a **branch**, that’s what branches are there for. Then, when the new functionality is stable, update **your** local code with respect to the default branch, then make sure\** all the functionality still works\** and **only** **then** commit and check it in to default
- Non existent or orphan files; if you add a new file,`hg add $filename` before updating or committing, otherwise noone has any idea whats going on. Ditto removals of files, its `hg remove $filename ; rm $filename`, not the other way around.

You guys got any to add? I’ll be adding to this as I think of them… / come across them…