[clug] July Programming SIG: the fourteen principles for new programmers

Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog at svana.org
Wed Jul 16 07:12:08 GMT 2008


On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 03:43:48PM +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
> You say:
>   "I've finished the first draft/prototype, but it has to be thrown away
> because of all these problems. It isn't secure, extensible, portable and
> performs like a dog - and is an absolute mess so maintenance will be a
> nightmare. I need xxx more weeks to properly design, implement & test
> the new version, and will need someone else to review the code and
> acceptance test the production version."

Wrong approach. You say:
    "If you use this as the production system you will have to double
the size of the customer support to cover the extra complaints we'll
get."

That said, you don't *have* to throw the first one away. If you follow
the later advice on modularity, then only the first incarnation of each
module has to be thrown away. So you're actually building parts of the
final system already in the prototype. It may be that structural
redesigns might make some parts redundant, but that's not all wasted.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog at svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Please line up in a tree and maintain the heap invariant while 
> boarding. Thank you for flying nlogn airlines.
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