‘Essential Skills for the Agile Developer’ Excerpt
How are developers supposed to walk the line between detailed planning that often involves adding code to account for situations that may never arise, or coding with little to no planning, hoping for the best? Adhering to the mantra described in this excerpt is one way to get closer to the ideal design, keep code easy and safe to change, and avoid unnecessary work.
Developers can fall into two camps: those who plan for contingencies and new requirements and add extra code that may never be used, and those who just avoid planning and code, code, code. The best strategy, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. As Ward Cunningham said, “Take as much time as you need to make your code quality as high as it can be, but don’t spend a second adding functionality that you don’t need now!”
“This excerpt is from the book, ‘Essential Skills for the Agile Developer: A Guide to Better Programming and Design’ by Shalloway, Bain, Pugh and Kolsky, Aug 2011, Pearson/Addison-Wesley Professional; ISBN 0321543734, Copyright 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. For more info please visit: www.informit.com/title/0321543734
