So I’m looking to know what it is that we don’t know the first time
that had we at the time known would lessen the need for a major
redesign and rewrite?
That’s the immanent quintessential property known as ‘What The User
Actually Wanted, But Didn’t Mention At First’.
Hehehe, that is certainly true, but really I think when it comes to
software development, like anything else, you learn mostly from
experience. So if you are writing a particular kind of application for
the first time, you just don’t know what the best approach will be
until the end, and of course by then you probably have an entire
program taking the wrong approach
My only advice would be to branch out and code as many different kinds
of applications as you can, and then eventually you just know how to
code everything
Of course by then you may be an 80-year-old programmer.
My only advice would be to branch out and code as many different kinds
of applications as you can, and then eventually you just know how to
code everything
Of course by then you may be an 80-year-old programmer.
Yes, and the variation on that theme, “What the programmer saw at 3
a.m. just as he closed down his editor for the evening and couldn’t
remember the next morning.”
So I’m looking to know what it is that we don’t know the first time
that had we at the time known would lessen the need for a major
redesign and rewrite?
That’s the immanent quintessential property known as ‘What The User
Actually Wanted, But Didn’t Mention At First’.
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Dan S.
Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
“Looking at technology from every angle”
Dan,
I must haveI missed CLR formally welcoming an illustrious programming
language guru and writer like yourself! I still have some of your
HyperCard books. They are a classic in clear technical writing.
Very kind of you to say, basi…and for that matter to remember me! I
am becoming quite intrigued with Ruby and Rails as I study them in
tandem. They just “feel” right.
I’m new myself to Ruby, and I’m still looking for the ‘syntactic
essence’ of Ruby. It is that thing that once you get it, everything
else is an embellishment. Much in the sense that grasping and
mastering
list manipulation in Lisp/Scheme can take you far and wide. I suspect,
in Ruby, as in other OO languagues, it is the object. I’m ready for a
Ruby book that starts with the most basic object/class and from which
most things I’d like to ‘compute’ will be shown to be mere extensions
or variations.
AH, yes, l’essence d’objects! I have a vague sense that the class
library for Ruby may not yet have settled enough to be the subject of
a book, that such a book would be obsolete before publication even if
it were made available as an eBook.
redesign and rewrite?
Nothing generic and therein lies the rub. If you really grok design
patterns and can map the domain you’re working in against those
patterns, that seems to reduce the number of times you have to
revise code almost completely, but the need never seems to go away,
at least in my experience. This seems to me to be the gestalt of OO
programming and I consider it a Good Thing. Refactoring is pretty
easy with the right tool and refining the design as you learn is a
good way to mimic nature, which is one of the reasons OO programming
works so well to begin with.
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Dan S.
Technology Visionary - Technology Assessment - Documentation
“Looking at technology from every angle”
On Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 02:34:08PM +0900, James B. wrote:
Ryan L. wrote:
…
My only advice would be to branch out and code as many different kinds
of applications as you can, and then eventually you just know how to
code everything
Of course by then you may be an 80-year-old programmer.
4 years in college. 3 more years about 10 after that. Our dojo shut
down so now I participate in my daughters Taekwondo class instead (and
managed to break and sprain my ankle two months ago ). I
definitely miss the grace, wonder and beauty of how Aikido works, much
like Ruby
On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 01:35:07AM +0900, Stephen Webb wrote:
Ruby.
Okay, that’s twice so far I’ve seen someone say something like this.
I’ll take this at face value for a moment:
I was making a comparison to a well-known and much beloved octogenarian
that could kick ass, not saying O Sensei knew/liked Ruby (though, if he
were a programmer with a chance to “meet” Ruby, I daresay he might
have).
I no return you to your regularly scheduled . . . whatever.
). I