This is the "I was so tired this morning I put shaving gel on my toothbrush" edition of Programming Quotables.

If you don't know - I don't like to have too many microposts on this blog, so save them up as I run across them, and every once in a while I'll post a few of them. The idea is to post quotes about programming that have one or more of the following attributes:

1. I find funny
2. I find asinine
3. I find insightfully true
4. And stand on their own, with little to no comment needed

It's up to you decide which category they fall in, if you care to. Anyway, here we go:

So how do we keep the design from rotting? How do we make sure we can migrate the design as the system changes? Simple. Tests.

When you have a suite of tests that covers >90% of the code in the system, you are not afraid to make changes. Every time you make a little change you run those tests, and you know that you have not broken anything. This gives you the confidence to make the next change, and the next, and the next. It gives you the confidence to change the design!

Software development processes have been undergoing evolution since the beginning and lately the whole agile process seems to be taking over. Whatever the process, many companies are finding more success in breaking down large projects into tiny goal-driven chunks, sometimes lasting as little as a week.

This same principles can be applied to ourselves at both large and fine-grained levels. It is definitely good and desirable to have the overall vision of our project in mind, but this doesn't often help us get the work done. Some of my most productive days are when I break down a huge task into tiny subtasks and set a goal for each one ("I will have this done by 11am today, then I will wrap up this other small one by 4pm.")

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap.

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