Blogging Pubbitch

*click* Another part of the XP way of thinking sinks in. I've been trying to develop "test first" for a while and found it to be slow going. I think that there were two reasons for this. Firstly, I was exploring a number of different ideas in code, and until those had been thrashed out nothing was going to go fast.

But I don't think that's the real reason for my slow project velocity. You see, as a developer, I love the intricacies of working on the back-end of the site. I'm fascinated by all the little moving parts, whirring in front of my eyes. Anyone who's ever written an appreciable amount of code must know this feeling, surely? But that's not the best way to get the speed up. The thing that's just clicked is that being able to show the end-user of your code something sooner rather than later isn't just to keep them happy. It's to keep you focussed on what you're doing.

I've just taken the time to start developing "front end first" by writing the JSP the way that I'd like it to be. This gives me the interface to my Webwork actions in the same way that TDD offers me a chance to write the interfaces to the other components. Once I know what the actions need to do, I can figure out what other pieces of the puzzle need some flesh to get things to work as expected.

Suddenly, I'm going a lot faster.

And apolgies for the snappy title.