Colt Bauman

A minimalist developer with a passion for game development, performance optimization, test writing, IoC, source generators, etc.

About this blog

Welcome to my code journal, where I share insights into my day-to-day development experiences, mostly related to game development. These experiences can range anywhere from bug resolution stories to feature implementations to performance optimizations, etc. Keeping a code journal is a great way to track growth and build a knowledge base, even if it’s just in a private Google Doc. By making it available to the public, the hope is that other developers 1) feel inspired and 2) find the information helpful.

About me

My name is Colt Bauman. I have about 9 years of professional experience, and 16 years overall as a software engineer. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Game and Simulation Programming in February of 2012, where C++ and C# were the primary languages.

Here’s the breakdown of my years of experience in various areas.

Skill Professional Hobby University
Game Development 3 10 3
Unreal Engine 1 1 1
C++ 1 1 3
Unity and C# 7 10 1
Mobile Development 4 3 0
Backend Engineering 2 2 0


In terms of game development, I’m most passionate about

  • 3D vector math
  • implementing game mechanics and systems
  • low level techniques implemented by game engines

Developer interests and tendencies

  • performance optimization
  • writing C# source generators
  • using Roslyn analyzers to enforce code style consistency
  • unit and integration test writing
  • dependency injection
  • conventional commit messages

Code Style Preferences

This section is just for fun, so you can get to know some of my coding style taste. These are some of the conventions that I like to establish when starting a new project. But when joining an existing project I don’t care which conventions are in use as long as it’s consistent.

Minimize nested if statements by inverting the condition and returning early.

// NO
if (myClass != null)
{
    if (myClass.Value > 42)
    {
        UpdateValue(myClass.Value);
    }
}

// YES
if (myClass == null)
{
    return;
}
if (myClass.Value <= 42)
{
    return;
}

UpdateValue(myClass.Value);


Use underscores for private variables.

private int _score;


Utilize, but don’t overuse, the value object pattern to avoid primitive obsession.

Value object: a small object that represents a simple entity whose equality is not based on identity: i.e. two value objects are equal when they have the same value, not necessarily being the same object

Primitive obsession: when a developer (over)uses primitives (string, int, Guid, decimal, etc) to represent business or domain concepts

For example, consider using the following type instead of a passing around a string that represents a customer ID. Find more details in this blog post.

public readonly record struct CustomerId(string Value);


Method parameters should either all be on one line or each should be on a separate line.

// keep on same line if it doesn't extend too far horizontally
public string JoinName(string first, string last)
{
}

// use separate lines if the signature gets too long
public string JoinName(
    int someRandomNumber,
    string longMethodParameterName1, 
    MySpecialCustomClass longMethodParameterName2)
{
}


Use one method invocation per line for method chaining, with only one level of indentation.

var firstString = GetListOfStrings()
    .Where(s => true)
    .Where(s => true)
    .Where(s => true)
    .FirstOrDefault();

but please don’t use deep indentation for alignment 😖

var firstString = GetListOfStrings().Where(s => true)
                                    .Where(s => true)
                                    .Where(s => true)
                                    .FirstOrDefault();