How many times have we cracked open our favorite IDE and started just writing code for some script? How much preparation goes into our thoughts on structure, style, or even layout? Over the years, I feel that I have matured in my experiences as a developer/script-kiddie. The old fingers of mine have written 100s of thousands of lines of code after over 15yrs of doing this. In that time, I learned a couple of valuable lessons about me.

• I am pretty set in my ways on how write my code
• I prefer tabs over spaces but my tabs set at 2 spaces
• I will never know all of it

Creating a Dagwood Sandwich takes skill and patience

So, I have to consider what is a solid foundation for writing code.  How do we build that perfect Dagwood sandwich with the delicate balancing of speed, agility, and sheer magnificence with an olive on top? When you think about your approach to writing code, how do you start?  Over the course of this series, I would like to take you for a peek behind the curtain and share what I start thinking about from Day One.  In this series, we are going to talk about how to build a solid foundation for your code regardless of your platform or language of choice.

The Building a solid foundation series will at the very least focus on the following areas:

• Code documentation from day one
• Layout and structure: How modular is too modular?
• Planning for tests
• Style and consistency
• Source code control: How to leverage frequent commits to save your tail later.