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Technology

Attitude Driven Development

A.D.D. From the textbooks of an introduction into the business world (Department of Decision Sciences, UNISA):

Control does not, however, keep workers from making mistakes. The motivation of workers and a positive attitude towards their tasks, limit the number of mistakes they make.

It explains why TDD on it’s own will fail, and also why some folk don’t even need a fully bulked up test suite, if one at all. Although personally, i think no matter how good you are, there has to be something challenging in every project which you need a safety net for to keep the productivity going.

And it explains a lot of things about business, but more importantly for me, the business of software production. Also, it helped me realise why the solid programmers i have had the honour of working with are good AND cool to work with.

Attitude towards your craft (and fellow crafters even) and the passion for what you do will be directly proportional to the number of bugs waiting for you in 3 months time on a tight deadline. And, i suppose, the converse would also be true: the number of bugs you’re dealing with today (of your own making) are a direct result of your attitude applied when first implemented, and if not of your own making, those bugs reflect the attitude of the guilty coder.

Of course, i maintain the assumption of all things being equal, most notably: skill and ability.

And therein lies a great life lesson too (it’s part of why i really groove on programming as a lifestyle). The relationship between the bugs in your life and your attitude towards your life is more apparent and plain to spot than you might imagine.

Categories
Technology

Annoying Software

One of the funniest things i read this morning… or maybe it was the tea?

“And yes, when I ask to exit the software, that’s because I really want to, not because I’m having a crisis of doubt.” (The bold is my emphasis)

LOL How many times have you joked about this? Are you really really really sure you want to exit? Really? For sure? Think about it carefully, because if you close me now, and you didn’t mean to, you’re going to have start me up all over again. So, are you sure you want to exit?

And the irony is, whenever i create an application where i don’t ask the user “Are you sure you want to <INSERT REQUESTED_ACTION HERE>?” after they explicitly clicked on the button to execute the aforementioned REQUESTED_ACTION, it feels like commiting a crime. In fact, i even had a user the other day log a “bug” saying: “Isn’t it supposed to ask me if i want to do that?” Priceless.

Btw, the quote is from an article on zdnet