Hard coding

Hard coding (also hard-coding or hardcoding) refers to the software development practice of embedding what may, perhaps only in retrospect, be considered an input or configuration data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, or fixed formatting of the data, instead of obtaining that data from external sources or generating data or formatting in the program itself with the given input.

Considered an anti-pattern, hard coding requires the program's source code to be changed any time the input data or desired format changes, when it might be more convenient to the end user to change the detail by some means outside the program.

Hard coding is often required. Programmers may not have a dynamic user interface solution for the end user worked out but must still deliver the feature or release the program. This is usually temporary but does resolve, in a short term sense, the pressure to deliver the code. Later, softcoding is done to allow a user to pass on parameters that give the end user a way to modify the results or outcome.

The term "hard-coded" was initially used as an analogy to hardwiring circuits - and was meant to convey the inflexibility which results from its usage within software design and implementation. In the context of run-time extensible collaborative development environments such as MUDs, hardcoding also refers to developing the core engine of the system responsible for low-level tasks and executing scripts, as opposed to softcoding which is developing the high-level scripts that get interpreted by the system at runtime. In this case, the term is not pejorative and refers to general development, rather than specifically embedding output data.

As a digital rights management measure, software developers may hardcode a unique serial number directly into a program. A program that has a unique serial number may regularly check its maker's website to verify that it hasn't been blacklisted as compromised. If that website moves or the company goes out of business, this may cause the program to fail, even for perfectly legal users, if that check is programmed to fail when no response is received.

On the opposite case, a software cracker may hard-code a valid serial number to the program or even prevent the executable from asking the user for it, allowing illegal copies to be redistributed without the need of entering a valid number, thus sharing the same key for every copy, if one has been hard-coded.

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