A Special Thanks

[Nick Craig-Wood]

norseman <norseman at hughes.net> wrote:
>  I'm one of those that tries to get an outline of the project and then 
>  puts in code as things become clear. Once the basics are working 
>  reasonably I go back and organize the thing for maintainability. Then 
>  finish flushing it out. It is the one stage I dread the most.
> 
>  Why not organize it up front?  Because I don't always have the whole pie 
>  at the outset.
> 
>  In changing to Python I had a bigger learning curve than I realized at 
>  the start.  When I finally got my "pieces" accomplishing what I wanted 
>  it became time to start looking at its structure.
> 
>  I did the cut and paste into a followable form and ran the basic to 
>  check for the usual errors, omissions and outright flaws. This was a 
>  major reorganization.
> 
>  IT RAN FLAWLESSLY THE FIRST TRY!  UNBELIEVABLE! (at least for me)

Python has a well deserved reputation for being executable
pseudo-code.  It is the only language I've ever used where when you
write the program it is quite likely to work the first time.

Python also converted me to using unit tests.  If you add unit tests
into your methodology above then when you re-organize (or refactor to
use the modern jargon) the code you can be 100% sure that you didn't
break anything which is a wonderful feeling.

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick