Programmer's Diary: Finding Your Ways

I usually tend to give any advice with a pinch of salt. In one of my tutorials about SOLID I wrote the following phrase: "As with any other principle, try not to think about everything from before."

Which led to some dilemmas with a few of my readers, especially because it was in the Interface Segregation Principle article. I answered the questions of the reader, but I think the ideas there merit a blog post. So, here it is. Read on.

Any exaggeration is bad. If you think about everything upfront, it is bad. If you think about nothing upfront, it is also bad. Finding the right balance in what to do and what to postpone or not to do at all is essential for every project. There is no universal theorem or solution. There are however some recommendations that try to keep us on the right track.

In Agile software development, you will mostly meet tow concept. Each of them is pulling back you from one of the two extremes mentioned above.

1) Postpone everything to the last responsible moment. If you apply this, you may ask yourself every time you make an interface: should I create the interface? Will there be more than one implementation? If yes, what and when that implementation will be? Is it more expensive for me to delay the release by 2 hours and implement the interfaces now, or it is more expansive to not write any interface and introduce them on the next release when I know I will need them? How sure I am that I will need the interface on the next release? Can the plan be changed, outside of my control, so that I end up with a code that will never be relevant?

2) Program with change in mind. If not from the first release, then from the second. If you needed to change a specific piece of code, than there is quite a big chance you will need to change it again. On your first change, make it so that your third, forth, and so on, changes will be easy. If you see some code, once written and never modified, and you have no reason to change it, don't.

Basically this is it. Now you may ask yourself how to deal with these problems? You have three possible ways to go on:

1) Take the postpone extreme. Postpone everything, until you feel it starts to heart. Than, gradually try to think a little bit ahead and don't postpone things quite as much. This is how we at Syneto started.

2) Take the plan for everything extreme, and evolve from there. This is actually one of the routes many people take when coming from Waterfall. Gradually try to identify parts that take up a long time in planning but proved to be marginally important. Continue doing so until you feel pleased with your process, and you don't feel that what you do will never be used or useful.

3) Take the middle road. This may sound attractively optimal, but it is not. I don't think any project is right in the middle between the extremes. You can take the middle road, and continually think about both extremes. With time you will find toward which end your project requires more attention.