application development - separating content from function

Max M maxm at mxm.dk
Fri Jun 21 06:47:12 EDT 2002


Peter Hansen wrote:

> Welcome to the club! :-)  Undertaking an overwhelming project is pretty
> common, especially with many open source projects.  Check out the number
> of idle projects on SourceForge, for example.  I've made many many 
> false starts in my life as a programmer, and I still regret much of the
> time I spent on some of those hopeless projects.


I absolutely agree. I have heard of people doing detailed design and 
architecture for big projects. I have never been able to work 
efficiently that way.

Getting a good basic project up, showing it to the customer, and then 
modify it, is definitely the way I prefer to work.

I don't mean thah I just sit down blindly and code out of the blue. I 
usually do interface mock-up's, designs etc. as much as I can. But even 
then I keep them absolutely minimal. This has also had the unexpected 
side effect that my interfaces usually are very easy to understand.

The problem with doing designs up-front is that the designs are very 
limited by your experience as a programmer.

Sometimes you need to use new technology you don't know, or you need to 
develop for an area of expertice you don't have etc. Then it is really 
hard to do good designs.

The XP method makes it much easier to learn as you go along.

regards Max M




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