Alright, Software Development is hard. Or, at least it is said to be hard and difficult. As I have mentioned loads of times, I really do believe it’s difficult, but us software developers make it more hard than it has to be. We tend to think in problems and difficulties, and create hard to maintain code, strange and weird solutions and check stuff that has been checked before. And don’t stampede because I said this right now. We all are very good at our jobs, and we certainly develop great things!
I recently read an article by Alberto Gutierrez where he’s talking about a thing he calls ‘Hope Driven Development’ or HDD. And I can’t particularly say that I agree or disagree with him on this point. As I strongly believe that we only need to develop what’s absolutely necessary for the solution I tend to say that it’s not that important and the phenomenon is mostly encountered in the other way around. But: quality software is essential too.
In the article Alberto Gutierrez talks about assumptions on the code level, I agree with that. But if you look from the end-users point of view, you just can’t approve to a lot of ‘plumbing’ on every level. Keep it simple. He also discusses Unit Testing. Of course, any program shouldn’t go live without it. But don’t exaggerate.
Alberto has a point though. And that’s the point that we, as developers, look at solutions as if we actually know what the meaning of it is. The strongest advice he gives us is to communicate. This is, not only at the level of code writing, but throughout the entire project team, essential.
Else we just might order a box of fortune cookies to tell us how to develop…
