Research Programming: Remember the Following
- For C++ code, read and write data in the simplest of formats. If complicated formats are necessary write python scripts. You should be able to make do with ifstream and ofstream. If you need Boost tokenizer, Sprit or LibXML, you are opening qa can of worms, what you need a python script and a simple intermediate format.
- Extract a small subset of real data for testing and debugging. Seriously, don’t do to work with the entire dataset.
- Don’t trust libraries with core stuff. Write all code from scratch. You should know exactly what is going on in your code.
- Save raw output data, all of it.
- Separate plotting from the execution of the algorithm. You should not have to rerun the experiment to get a different plot.
- Every once in a while extract and put away frequently used code in a library.
- Do not use a unit testing framework, it’s an overkill. Write small tests as you go along in the main, when successful delete and move on.
- Try to exactly replicate the algorithm as possible. No shortcuts.
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