On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 09:38 +0100, Dave Griffiths wrote:
> this sounds a bit like the test driven programming method, where you write
> the all the tests first (sometimes this is done by another programmer),
> then when all the tests pass you've finished. this is the reverse of how
> most people do it, but it's much more effective.
More effective at what? Again, it might be useful for strictly designed
business logic, but can be a disaster in creative programming where
aberration is desirable. Personally I find this kind of approach
dehumanising, particularly for the programmer who has to write the
sourcecode against the tests. It seems a good approach for industrial
programming and for bug fixing though.
> loose ends has a much nicer sound to it though :)
I think it's also a very different approach, more like placeholders in
jitlib (correct me if I'm wrong - I've never used jitlib). Loose ends
allow you to build a program from nothing and have it active without
being structurally complete (from my brief reading it seems that the
program pauses if it finds a loose end, waiting for the programmer to
write that bit). Programming to pre-written tests is all about
achieving some pre-defined ideal, and you always have to have a
structurally complete program to run the tests against.
> I cant find LC2 on this, but it might be a good time to send it round
> again anyway:
> http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/languageposter_0504.html
Beautiful, we could make one for dynamic languages.
alex
Received on Thu Sep 21 2006 - 11:33:32 BST