This is the 56th Step towards gaining the Programming Enlightenment series. If you didn’t learn the 55th Step, read it.
The process of developing the software is mostly invisible.
* If you’re 90% done and endlessly stuck trying to debug your way through the last 10% then you’re not 90% done, are you? * Fixing bugs is not making progress.
Invisibility can be dangerous when developing software. We can manage things better when we can see them and see them constantly changing.
How to make invisible Visible?
There are many tools in the trade.
- Writing unit tests reveals about the code; qualities such as low coupling and high cohesion.
- Running unit tests provides evidence about the code; qualities such as robustness and correctness.
- Following agile practice with tools like Jira, Kanban board, whatever the team is doing will be more visible and direct us what is making the project fall behind.
- Doing incremental development increase the visibility of development progress.
TL;DR Visibility of project gives confidence that progress is genuine and not an illusion.
Go to 55th Step
Go to the 57th Step.
References:
- 97 things Every Programmer Should Know ~ Git Book
- 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know ~ Paperback
