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|             Lessons on Software Design and Implementation                 |
|                     I've Learned the Hard Way                             |
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First off, better references than mine:


* Planning


* Speed vs. Size

  For a specialized application, that is, an application that will be run on
  dedicated hardware, do *NOT* worry about temporarily "saving memory" by
  realloc()ing data structures. Why not?

    * There should already be enough space

      If the platform is required to run your app, it should be configured
      with enough memory, storage, etc. That platform should not have any
      non-necessary software installed. It should be able to run your
      software, and that's it.

* Simplicity

  * Keep it simple

    Anyone can write a program that works and that is almost impossible for
    other people to understand. It takes a skilled programmer to produce
    code that is defect-free and straight-forward.

    Because all serious programming languages are Turing-complete, there are
    an infinite number of programs that, given the same input, produce the
    same output as your program. 

  * Everything else equal, fewer lines of code is better

    Given 2 functions that are well-written, clear and produce exactly the
    same output, I would select the shorter one over the longer one. Why?

* Time

  * Programmer's time vs. Machine's time


* Optimization
    
  * 

* Everything In Its Place

  * Variable/Field value should represent a single piece of information

    I once worked on an application that stored its data in a database. The
    keys were varchars in the format:

    prefix - name - suffix - optional suffix

    The application's queries and code had large, complicated logic for
    filtering and parsing out the various sub-fields and generally making
    sense of it. Why? This data could very simply fit in 4 separate database
    fields or an array/structure.

  *