Re: Rapid Application Development

Ben C said:

On 2006-07-16, Richard Heathfield <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Phlip said:

Richard Heathfield wrote:

Rapid Application Development
Detailed, useful documentation prepared during development

Choose one.

Uh, I sort'a thought there was a third option there. And more rapid...

If you increase the programming effort, you're taking away effort from
the documentation, and vice versa. If you add people so as to try to do
both in parallel, the documenters end up nagging the programmers for
information, slowing both teams down. Fred Brooks covered this some time
ago.

I'm not sure about this. In programming you have to "be slow to be
fast". Taking a bit of extra time to document as you go along may speed
up development measured over the next year or so because the act of
documenting has slowed people down a bit and made them think more about
what they're doing-- so fewer bugs to fix, and clearer code so they're
easier to fix.

Oh, I agree entirely - but that just means you've chosen Option 2 because
you think that it's more productive than Option 1 in the long term. In
other words, you are of the school that thinks "Rapid Application
Development" is a misnomer. :-)

--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at above domain (but drop the www, obviously)
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: I cant believe how complex this Format SDK is...
    ... technologies from low level interrupt programming to high-level user ... Sorry for any offence but I disagree. ... I find the documentation more than sufficient. ... -- In looking at profiles, am I even looking in the right place? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia.sdk)
  • Re: removing last chrs (with different browsers giving different last chrs )
    ... Documentation is just as important if you are going to be the only one to look at it. ... the best tool I've found for PHP programming is Crimson editor on Windows or vim on Linux. ... I don't have one function which tries to validate everything. ... This ensures the value is an integer and puts out a meaningful error message if it isn't. ...
    (comp.lang.php)
  • Re: I wonder if Windows REALLY support the C++ language
    ... Just to borrow from data structures and programming world ... so is the search time (and sometimes worse ... > So should have been with MS’ documentation – that is, ... The distinction is between GUI and console programming, ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.language)
  • Re: Beware wildcards in Kill
    ... as we "float" up into the sphere of advanced programming, the base constructs of what all is created from gets lost in the fog of ... > that documentation is often written by "technical writers" ... > who lack any real technical depth, ... > The only reason I happen to know the stuff I just told you ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.syntax)
  • Re: Designing PHP applications
    ... The type of advice would depend much on your programming background. ... bonus, when your documentation is structured and organized, the better ... Have a look at CVS. ... expecially one that has a gallery module... ...
    (comp.lang.php)