07-03-2012 08:54 AM
@Ben wrote:
@jyang72211 wrote:
haha. I meant one time during the first development.
I do not have an answer to your posted question but I have to ask out of concern.
Are you writing code before you know what the design will be?
In my minds eye writing code without a design is like starting a journey without knowing where you are going. Sure it may be a fun adventure but I would be suprised if it result in an efficent path to a solution.
Concerned,
Ben
It is fun! I used to do it all the time. 😄
07-03-2012 09:37 AM
@jcarmody wrote:
@Ben wrote:
@jyang72211 wrote:
haha. I meant one time during the first development.
I do not have an answer to your posted question but I have to ask out of concern.
Are you writing code before you know what the design will be?
In my minds eye writing code without a design is like starting a journey without knowing where you are going. Sure it may be a fun adventure but I would be suprised if it result in an efficent path to a solution.
Concerned,
Ben
It is fun! I used to do it all the time. 😄
Me to. It was mostly when I had to do a program for a certain person. He would never tell me what I needed (requirements, protocols, etc.) mostly because he didn't know himself. I deemed him the king of feature creep since he changed his mind a lot and never told us when he changed something. The ironic part was that he was the head of the CMMi effort.
07-03-2012 09:52 AM
@crossrulz wrote:
...Me to. It was mostly when I had to do a program for a certain person. He would never tell me what I needed (requirements, protocols, etc.) mostly because he didn't know himself. I deemed him the king of feature creep since he changed his mind a lot and never told us when he changed something. The ironic part was that he was the head of the CMMi effort.
Even when using an Agile approach, (WHen I first read about it I came away with "Let's start coding and we will find out what it supposed to do latter.") we are allowed to plan the work for the current set of requirments.
Ben
07-03-2012 10:08 AM
@Ben wrote:
Even when using an Agile approach, (WHen I first read about it I came away with "Let's start coding and we will find out what it supposed to do latter.") we are allowed to plan the work for the current set of requirments.
Ben
Let me clearify. I never got my requirements. I would get some very high level idea of what the program was supposed to do and never given any real requirements. Luckily, I learned to use some flexible architectures and I didn't get burned that bad when everything changed on me. Type defined enums were my best friend.
07-03-2012 10:19 AM
I would challenge your colleagues to give you more requirements than just high level requirements. Your flying blind if you don't and going to be doing some unnecessary code changes and wasting of your time if you don't.
07-03-2012 10:30 AM
High-fling ideas are requirements waiting to be defined.
Ex:
High-level - "I want a statue of Gene Kelly dacning in the rain."
Requirements:
made of Bronze
Full Scale
He should be smiling
Arms extended to allow use by pidgeons.
An artist would work through scale models and interact with the sponsor to define the requirements.
Given the option and unlimitied funding, I would prefer to work from the High-level along with a domain expert to define the requirments myself. That lets me choose solutions that meet the requirments that are easy to implement.
Are we dancing on the edge of symantics here?
Ben
07-03-2012 10:38 AM
It always depends on the situation. If I'm hired by the hour of what I effectively invest in programming, then I have no problems with working from a very high level definition and refining that as necessary as working through the implementation, but there is no way I would quote a project as fixed price without some solid requirements description.
07-03-2012 10:42 AM
@Eric1977 wrote:
I would challenge your colleagues to give you more requirements than just high level requirements. Your flying blind if you don't and going to be doing some unnecessary code changes and wasting of your time if you don't.
Beleive me, I tried. But when the boss says "get coding, you're holding up the program" and me saying "I don't know what I'm supposed to do yet" doesn't work, you have to do something. I actually got written up because I refused to do any code until I had documentation. One of the reasons I was more than happy to find another position at another company.
Like I said, I found flexible architectures and fully expected to have to change the details.
07-06-2012 08:52 AM
Ben - Thanks for your concern. I usually have a design before I write code, but for some small program, I just roll with the punches, since they are pretty straight forward. I do this especially for subvi that have straight forward sequence.
07-06-2012 08:54 AM
I had the same concern with Agile, but the person who was in charge said that good planning is required before the agile process starts. However, I think people so caught up with Agile that they forget to plan.