Re: Rework [Was: Static vs. Dynamic typing...]

From: Robert C. Martin (unclebob_at_objectmentor.com)
Date: 07/18/04 

Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 12:41:12 -0500

On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 03:56:56 +0200, "Ilja Preuß" <it@iljapreuss.de>
wrote:

>Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>
>> It's jarring to someone not used to that.
>
>It's also a little bit exaggerated. For example, most often you won't be
>surprised if your last step wasn't enough and you need to go further - at
>least I don't know how to stop thinking and knowing things. Sometimes you
>might even go two or three steps at once, when feeling bold.
>
>It is not about always going in those tiny little steps. It's about having
>practiced it for a while, being able to do it, and finding ones own balance.

Finding your balance is an interesting journey. When I first saw TDD
done (Kent and I did a little pair programming in 1999.) I was
flabbergasted at how tiny the cycles were. I refused to believe that
such tiny cycles were necessary. However, I'm also an amateur martial
artist; and one of the things they teach you very early in Martial
arts is to imitate the teacher without question until you are sure you
know what questions to ask.

So for several months I tried to keep my cycles as small as Kent's
were. That was hard, and took a lot of practice. Eventually I got
pretty good at it. Then I started "feeling my oats" and decided to
play with the cycle length. I found that when I made the cycle length
longer than a few minutes I got caught in nasty situations where
sometimes I wasn't able to test for 30 min to an hour. I found that I
needed to pull out the debugger and step my way through a tangle. So
I shortened my cycles back up. Since then I've been finding my cycles
getting shorter and shorter; and I don't find that it takes any longer
to do it that way.

-----
Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)
Object Mentor Inc.
unclebob @ objectmentor . com
800-338-6716

"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom,
 but to set a limit to infinite error."
    -- Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

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