Thoughts about software development

Simplest solutions are usually the best solutions. We as software developers work with hard problems and solve a lot of small problems every day. Solving a hard problem itself is a hard job. Though in my opinion it's not enough to solve a hard problem in any possible way but a hard problem should be solved with a simple solution. When a developer comes up with a simple solution to a hard problem then they can declare the problem solved. First a disclaimer. Coming up with a simple solution to a hard problems is itself a very hard problem and takes a lot of time, effort and practice. I've seen my share of "clever" solutions for hard problems and the problem with those is that usually the solution itself is so hard to understand that depending on the size of the problem it may take a developer from hours to days or even weeks to understand how that "clever" solution works. It's a rare occasion when a developer has come up with a simple solution to a hard pr...

Immutability is a special thing that in my mind deserves a short explanation and praise. If you're familiar with functional programming you surely recognice the concept of immutability because it's a key ingredient of the paradigm. In the world of object oriented programming it's not as used and as easy to use approach but there are ways to incorporate immutability to parts of the code and I strongly suggest you to do so. Quick intro to immutablity The basic idea of immutability is unchangeable data.  Lets take a example. We have a need to modify a object's property but because the object is immutable we can't just change value but instead we make a copy of the object and while making the copy we provide the new value for the copy. In code it looks something like this. val pencil = Product(name = "Pencil", category = "Office supply") val blackMarker = pencil.copy(name = "Black marker") The same idea can be applied in functions and metho...