On 7/26/23 9:25 AM, J. B. Rainsberger wrote:
On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 3:55?PM Vaughn Cato via groups.io <> <vaughn_cato@... <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
One thing that helped me with design by using TDD was how it
encourages making constant changes to the code. It makes changes
necessary because you haven't thought too far ahead, and it makes
changes safe because of the quality of the tests and how fast you
can run them. Because you are constantly changing the code, this
leads to wanting to find ways to make those changes easier, and code
that is easy and safe to change strongly overlaps with well-designed
code. Reducing coupling and increasing cohesion is one of those
things that you find makes code easier to change.
This is perhaps one aspect of Evolutionary Design in general that I emphasize: it normalizes changing code; it helps reverse the belief that changing code is a failure of prediction and that there is a "first time" to "get it right".
I recently sidestepped an argument on Reddit about this. It had been a long time since I'd encountered someone who genuinely believed that one must always get the design right the first time and every other way to work is wrong. They framed it as something like "Why would you waste time building it the wrong way just so that you can build it the right way later?!" They seemed unable to see that it might not be possible to see "the right way" and "the wrong way" in advance or that those labels might change or that those labels are not helpful in the first place.
I don't know where people are learning this, apart from generic "life lessons" of perfectionism drilled into them when they were very young.
A lot of traditional approaches treat any need to change the code as evidence of a defect. Back around the start of the century, someone told me they were following Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process (PSP) and were counting every time they hit the backspace key as a defect they had corrected.
- George
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* George Dinwiddie *
Software Development
Consultant and Coach
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