Good Programming Practices

If you plan to contribute, always keep in mind the following practices (ordered semi-randomly)

• Run the test functions for regression checking.
• To see bottlenecks and quantify performance, use the MATLAB profiler (for parfor loops use timeit instead).
• Leave comments explaining what the code does.
• Avoid loops and instead vectorize code.
• Use bsxfun for more advanced vectorization.
• Write functions, not scripts (OK scripts are fine for quick checking/debugging).
• cellfun, arrayfun are not vectorized and are sometimes slower than loops; use with caution.
• Don't use global variables (it's OK to temporarily use them to gather data for speed experiments)
• Careful when using functions like diag that operate differently on arrays vs matrices. They might have unintended effects in edge cases.
• Debug extensively using breakpoints. Use the function call stack to debug the callers of the function throwing an error.
• Exception handling incurs speed penalties. It's best to handle errors using if statements.