Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images ...

192 Learning Processing
11.3
Tip #3: Simplify
Simplify. Simplify! SIMPLIFY!
In Chapter 10, we focused on the process of incremental development. Th e more you develop your
projects step-by-step, in small, easy to manage pieces, the fewer errors and bugs you will end up having.
Of course, there is no way to avoid problems completely, so when they do occur, the philosophy of
incremental development can also be applied to debugging. Instead of building the code up piece by
piece, debugging involves taking the code apart piece by piece.
One way to accomplish this is to comment out large chunks of code in order to isolate a particular
section. Following is the main tab of an example sketch. Th e sketch has an array of Snake objects,
a Button object, and an Apple object. (Th e code for the classes is not included.) Let’s assume that
everything about the sketch is working properly, except that the Apple is invisible. To debug the problem,
everything is commented out except for the few lines of code that deal directly with initializing and
displaying the Apple object.
// Snake[] snakes = new Snake[100];
// Button button;
Apple apple;
void setup() {
size(200,200);
apple = new Apple();
/*for (int i = 0; i < snakes.length; i ++ ) {
snakes[i] = new Snake();
}
button = new Button(10,10,100,50);
smooth();*/
}
void draw() {
background(0);
apple.display();
// apple.move();
}
/*for (int i = 0; i < snakes. length; i + + ) {
snakes[i].display();
snakes[i].slither();
snakes[i].eat(apple);
}
if (button.pressed()) {
applet.restart();
} */
/*void mousePressed() {
button.click(mouseX,mouseY);
} */
Only the code that makes the
Apple object and displays the
object is left uncommented. This
way, we can be sure that none of
the other code is the cause of the
issue.
Large blocks of code can be
commented out between /*and*/
/*All of this is
commented out */