Extending classes __init__behavior for newbies

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:47:54 +1000, James Mills wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 9:32 AM, rantingrick <rantingrick at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Those who write code bases should "design-in" practicality, re-
>> usability, and extendability as a forethought and NOT an afterthought.
>> Of course i am not suggesting that everyone must be clairvoyant.
>> However the vast amount of time involved in a coding project should be
>> spent in the design and testing phases and NOT actually writing code.
>> If you spend more time writing code you are not being professional, you
>> are being sloppy -- and it WILL catch up to you.
> 
> I actually agree with this. :)


I don't. If you (generic you) have separate "write the code" and "test 
the code" phases, your project is in trouble. You can probably get away 
with it if it's a tiny throw-away script, but for anything more 
substantial, you should be testing *as you are writing*. The two need to 
go in parallel.

I don't follow full-blown test driven development where you write the 
test before you write the code, but still, the time to find out your 
infrastructure is fundamentally broken is *before* you have finished it, 
not three months later when you have built the entire app on top of it.



-- 
Steven