On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Glenn Ford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I agree with David - you are certainly on the right track. I also think you are doing the right thing when you write specs even if they seem not perfect to you at first attempt - once you have written the code you can evaluate why they could be better and then make your adjustments as you learn more. A lot of times if I'm writing some code for a challenging piece, it's > challenging to me because I don't already know how to do it. I can > write the basic "here's the setup, result.should eql(this_thing)" but > I can't write any mocks/stubs/should_receives in the middle because at > every step, I just honestly have no idea how it should work!! So I > throw in real models and try to make it as real as possible, rather > than as "pure" as possible. It's not until after I get things working > that I even know what the solution should remotely look like. This is > due to my inexperience that I have to hack around a lot before I > figure out how to make things work. Unfortunately, I know this means > I write code that is more complicated than it should be, but if I > can't figure out a better way, I have to write something that still > works! I also often find it hard to implement a new solution from scratch using the BDD / TDD test-first approach. Sometimes it works for me to make a very crude spike solution to figure out how this part of the program actually should work (often writing no automated tests at all). Once I have an idea of the outline I put the spike away and start implementing the real solution in the real codebase, writing tests first etc. Interestingly, it seems to me that the whole task actually _is_ accomplished quicker this way because I don't have to keep the production code clean & tested while experimenting and because I don't have to sit and figure out the design while writing the production code. As a gain experience I think there will be more solutions that I can implement without having to spike them before. -- Siemen
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