Choosing a Methodology, That You Should Consider Before You Write a Single Line of Code
4327book.fm Page 1 Tuesday, February 24, 2004 3:49 PM Chapter 1 Planning Your Project How does one design an electric motor? Would you attach a bathtub to it, simply because one was available? Would a bouquet of flowers help? A heap of rocks? —Professor Bernardo de la Paz, quoted in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL 4327book.fm Page 2 Tuesday, February 24, 2004 3:49 PM 2 Chapter 1 • Planning Your Project S o there you are with your shiny new IDE and your coding skills and a vague idea of what it is that you want to produce. The temptation can be almost overwhelming to dive right in and start typing. Don’t do it. Even the smallest of projects benefits from at least a little bit of planning up front, and yours is no different. In this chapter, I’ll discuss some of the basic planning steps, including requirements management and choosing a methodology, that you should consider before you write a single line of code. Nailing Down a Feature Set Before you write a single line of code, there’s a simple yet difficult question that you must answer: What are you writing? You need to have more than a vague idea of the end product before you can finish building an application. If you don’t know what you’re trying to produce, then you’re not really writing an application; you’re just noodling around with code. There’s nothing wrong with that as a learning activity, but as a developer, you need to be more focused.
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