Your Must-Read Books on Software Development
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Architecture
HOW TO WRITE EFFICIENT AND SCALABLE CODE
The world is getting increasingly digital, meaning more people depend on the web yearly. With this situation, web developers must contemplate the potential scale of workload their web applications may need to handle in the future. Web applications can potentially have to be accessed by millions of people. This, of course, will put a strain on the software's capacity, which can result in less speed or even a complete shutdown.
Against this backdrop, it has become necessary for developers to pay attention to the scalability and efficiency of their code.
What Does It Mean for Code to be Efficient?
When determining whether a piece of code is efficient, one of the most important metrics is speed. A slow software is generally not considered to be of high quality, even if it produces the desired result. In essence, when you write an efficient piece of code, it should not only deliver the desired result but without lags or excessive delay in its processes. Needless to say, an inefficient piece of code would be incredibly frustrating for customers and can affect your overall business.
This is why it is of utmost importance to write code that delivers responses quickly. Experienced developers adopt many techniques and best practices to write efficient code. Let's consider some of these techniques.
Writing Efficient Code
Here are some steps you can take to improve the efficiency of your code:
1. Create function
Repetitive processes can be a real drag in software development. Without finding a way to automate these repetitive processes, you can end up having to write the same code over and over again. This is why it is essential to leverage functions. Once you identify a block of code repeated throughout the application that can be parameterized, it is advisable to create a function to generalize this block of code. This way, you would have adopted a simple and practical approach to increasing speed.
In addition to making for a more efficient programming process, creating functions also makes your code much cleaner and readable.
2. Use loops strategically
Loops are some of the essential tools programmers use to improve efficiency. However, it is crucial to understand that excessive and non-cautious use of loops can also affect efficiency. Thus, it is a best practice to break loops where necessary, minimizing the number of iterations as much as possible. In essence, once the required value is tallied, you should not run every possible iteration. Instead, break the loop as soon as the desired result is gotten. This would cut out additional processes and functions in your code that can impact operating time and make your code inefficient.
3. Avoid unnecessary variables
Having too many variables and loops in the global scope is terrible for efficiency. This is particularly the case if you are working on a project that requires a massive code base. Thus, it is essential to maintain simplicity and avoid unnecessary variables as they simply generate noise and affect functionality. An alternative approach is to write code within functions that are subsequently defined within the class definitions. Variables can also be better managed with data structures. Data structures allow the storage of multiple pieces of the same type of data with a single identifier name as opposed to multiple variables.
This step makes code easier and quicker to debug and maintain while also simplifying the performance of loops.
4. Leverage object-oriented programming
When writing code to model real-life objects or environments, you can improve your efficiency by adopting object-oriented programming techniques. This approach allows for the modeling of complex things as simple and reproducible structures. The importance of object-oriented programming for efficiency is well understood by leading IT service providers like YouDigital, who often implement these techniques using languages like C++, Java, and Python.
Writing Efficient Code
Scalability is one of the main features of a good code. An excellent code should be able to scale quickly as business needs might require. A scalable code does not require frequent or many modifications to maintain performance when handling varying workloads. Requirements change often. However, if your code has to be modified many times to adapt to these requirements, such code is not scalable.
Here are some of the techniques you can adopt to write a scalable code:
1. Focus on horizontal scalability
There are two significant types of scalability when coding. The first is vertical scalability, which means adding more resources to a computer system. Such resources include memory, faster CPUs, and network interfaces. While vertical scalability is affordable and easier to implement, your code would reach its limits faster. This is why it's vital to focus on scaling horizontally. This means adding more servers as opposed to upgrading the existing ones. If your code is incompatible with horizontal scaling, you can easily get stuck with the single solution of constantly upgrading hardware.
2. Leverage cache
Cache stores data that allows future queries to be served faster. Thus, by leveraging cache extensively, you can improve the performance and scalability of your code substantially. To use caches optimally, identify what data needs to be accessed frequently. When you cache such data in memory, you effectively enable high-speed access to it in the future. Notably, distributed memory caches are preferable to host-based caches for most purposes.
3. Aim for statelessness
Statelessness refers to a design principle in which applications or protocols do not track historical data and references. Instead, a stateless application handles each interaction request based entirely on the information accompanying it. This approach complements distributed architecture for horizontal scalability. By having the components of the architecture stateless, they can be easily redistributed and scaled to adapt to workload changes.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, scalability and efficiency are primary considerations for experienced programmers seeking to ensure their code works optimally. It is, thus, no surprise that top IT service providers like YouDigital prioritize scalability and efficiency in software development.
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