Bottom Line

Dynamic coding techniques aren’t for every situation and they don’t replace good coding techniques. When you find a good static solution for a development issue, use it. However, in those situations where you can’t create a workable static solution during design time, dynamic coding techniques do offer a good creative solution. In most cases, you use dynamic coding to address these concerns:

• The user’s environment will change in unpredictable ways
• You can’t control the user’s machine setup
• Either the user or the application will add data elements that you implement using a control
• The application must perform one-time setup tasks that interact intensely with the machine, its environment, network, or other unstable element
• The application performs a process-level task that depends on the machines connectivity or other state

Obviously, there are other situations where dynamic coding techniques do provide useful services—these bullets represent only common ways in which you see this technique used. The important word to remember when considering dynamic coding techniques is unpredictable. You generally use these techniques when the coding environment presents some level of unpredictability that static code can’t handle.

BIO

John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 82 books and over 300 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads down programming. His current project is LINQ for Dummies (available now), which you can order at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470277947/datacservip0f-20/. His technical editing skills have helped over 60 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. You can reach John on the Internet at JMueller@mwt.net and his Web site at: http://www.mwt.net/~jmueller/.