[PD] Good PD programming practice?

Mathieu Bouchard matju at sympatico.ca
Fri Mar 5 02:32:18 CET 2004


On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> So, maybe the "non-Extreme Programming" advice I would give is: "Sit
> down and think, before you patch." Actually I got this advice once
> from Kim Cascone, who said it in a slightly other way like: "Make a
> detailed plan before you develop something and by all means: Stick to
> it!" The last part is the hard part.

A more Extreme Programming way of dealing with creating patches would be
like:

 * prototype as you go, the way you feel it, making sure you have
   add something useful AND working, and make sure your code doesn't stop
   working for extended periods of time

 * when you get enough experience with the problem that you now
   have an idea about how to make a part of your patch cleaner, _do it_.

 * especially, any kind of duplication of effort and copypaste programming
   should be destroyed right after it's created, and replaced by something
   cleaner.

 * when you make an abstraction, also provide a patch that can
   automatically test it and report whether it works. create the testing
   patch before the actual abstraction (!). Whenever there is a bug,
   add something to the testing patch to test for that bug, and only then
   fix the bug so that the testing patch stops complaining. Use your
   testing patches as your bug database as much as possible.

________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard                       http://artengine.ca/matju





More information about the Pd-list mailing list