Friday, April 21, 2006

Development Philosophy

When I write code, I usually try to imagine all the conditions under which the code will run, what can fail, etc., and write code or add comments to handle or describe these conditions. I am sure I am not alone in this and that there are a number of formalized procedures that promote this.

I am wondering if this is becoming an "old fashioned" way to program.
The modern way seems to be to bash out code as fast as possible without thinking too much, and fix problems as they arise. I expect this is not entirely new, but rather is simply becoming more common, and perhaps even more accepted. In fact the whole agile thing seems to address how one can code in this fashion but still end up with good code.

I am suddenly suspicious that I am in danger of losing touch, and becoming an "old fogey" in coding terms. Not because I don't keep up with my reading (I do) but because deep down I am still holding on to old ideals and methods.

Still, they say that half of fixing a problem is recognizing you have it :-)