Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Thu, 01 Jun 2006"The Simplest Thing" and the Change Event Horizon Dan shared an important experience from Expo-C in which he debated Haskell creator Erik Meijer on the XP philosophy of Doing the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work. To me, the best part about Dan's story is the realization that our experiences as programmers (and as humans) so powerfully shape the way we approach our work. This explains why a language designer and a custom software consulant would have conflicting software design approaches, and yet both are "correct" in a specific context. We must be attentive our context, particularly when we change working environments. The programmer who thoughtlessly applies a single approach in every context is headed for trouble. Thoughtful programmers consider variables such as the Change Event Horizon when applying the rules they have developed previously:"So now we had a working definition of 'too simple'. It can be defined as any decision that doesn't consider the scale of the change event horizon. As an agile developer, one of my objectives is to create as small a change event horizon as I can, through the medium of continuous integration, automated testing and regular user feedback." |
