House of cards
23Oct06 Brian
Weekends are programming killers, I swear. Friday I got pretty deep into rewriting the methodology to display threads dynamically that reside above your current threshold. Now monday rolls around and I’m trying to get back into it, and I’ll be damned if I don’t even remember where I was. What was I doing? How far did I get? Even as I’m breaking it down again and trying to get back to where I was, I can remember thinking through the same things last friday but I can’t remember what I came up with. As steven said, its like building a big house of cards and then saturday comes and WHOOOSH knocks it all down.
About 10 years ago I noticed I was having the same problem. I couldn’t figure out what happened. Where did I start having this problem? OK, when was the last time I remember NOT having this problem? Bingo! I never had this problem back in tha days when I DESIGNED first, then coded. Last time? Back in my structured programming days when I was designing in Warnier-Orr diagrams and/or pseudocode complete. Is there anytime today I don’t have those problems? Yep, when I do Assembly Language I almost always work from Decision tables. So what did I do? I learned UML and actually design my larger programs before I start coding. (This even applies to large spreadsheet apps, of which I do a lot.) I’m an old-time programmer. I learned to program in 1965 on the IBM 1401 doing cryptology for the Army. The practice was to flowchart first, then code. If you’re losing your place, you may not be working from a plan with enough detail. One thing I’ve learned: If I spend more time in design and planning, the overall project becomes shorter.
Mike
BTW: the e-mail box on your forms don’t allow me to click in my form info.