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July 20, 2007
Growing Pains!
If the human bodies developed the
way many programmers write their programs, the world would have been a far
more interesting place to live in.
Assuming average human life spans
80 years, you would see the left leg growing for almost ten years.
Once the left leg grew completely, the right leg would
start showing up.
After about 20 years or so, it
would abdomen’s turn to grow. (I met a very close friend of mine yesterday,
who is about 60% complete, and his arms have just started showing up.)
After the entire left leg grows,
the testing would begin and then the leg might have to shrink a little bit
to be totally bug-free.
Interesting world to live in,
isn't it?
That's how many programmers treat
the code that they write. And that's the reason very soon programmers find
that their code-base has become very complex, tracking bugs becomes all the
more difficult and they totally lose control of their own application. The
result is – S_ _ _
So, how do you understand your
own “code” [human] body?
The human body, at whatever stage
of development it is, is perfect, complete and fully functional. New
features get added as the body grows, but at whatever stage it is, the body
is complete in itself.
That is the reason bugs in human
bodies are relatively easy to diagnose and fix. And, that's why new
features show up with ease, almost naturally.
That is what you could do to make
your software development process easy and manageable.
At any point of time, ensure that
whatever code-base exists is perfect, complete and fully functional.
Then, you add some more
functionality. And you ensure again that whatever has been added is
perfect, complete and fully functional.
At every step, you are confident
that your code works perfectly well.
At every step, you would be
confident that whatever you have just added works perfectly well.
And if something has gone wrong,
you will know precisely where to look for errors.
The most striking result of this
would be—at every step you would feel great about yourself and your code.
The next time you type in 200
lines of code before compiling, executing or thoroughly testing—remember
that “interesting world”, where, at your present age, you had two legs
working fully developed and the "implementation" of the abdomen
would be just about to begin.
Ensure that you are in control of
your code right from the first line of code that you write. And then, add
some more code and again ensure that you are in control again. That will
save you several hours of unnecessary debugging.
That will be enjoyable. That will be confidence
building.
That
will be Artistic.
Watch this space for more. |
