Clean Coder Chapters 5 and 6

Clean Coder Chapters 5 and 6

Chapter 5:

I have to say that I enjoyed these two chapters, I think in part because they are on stuff that I need work with and don’t have too much experience in them, well the test driven development (TDD) anyways. I find it interesting reading about coding experience from someone who has been coding since punch cards and to see how much the skill has evolved. I used to have a Commodore 64 and was familiar with the Apple 2 machines and programming in Basic. It is awe inspiring to see how much the languages have grown and power of systems increase since then. Well back on subject and TDD. I do not have really any experience outside of some TDD examples I have done for class and reading about it, but I can see how it can be great. I think it may be hard for me to get used to as though it makes sense to me in theory, putting it to work in practice is another story. I like the 3 laws of TDD and imagine it is going to take some getting used to writing tests before writing any actual code, and sticking to it. I can see the benefits for sure. The thing that I like is that it seems to force you to write smaller parts of the whole and in the end you end up with not only a bunch of smaller modules, but you also have the tests to go along with them and the confidence that what you have will work. The other plus is that when you add code or update, you are only doing it to smaller parts of the whole so it is easier to track the bugs when something does break I would think. It is crazy that his FitNesse program takes only 90 seconds to run and has 90% test coverage with only 17 bugs in his list. That there seems to me like proof in the pudding on TDD. As I said before, this is something I will have to work on and gain confidence with and take his advice on courage. I really like the statement, “When you have a suite of tests that you trust, then you lose all fear of making changes.” For now, I will just work on following the three laws of TDD.

Chapter 6:

This chapter’s subject in my opinion is so very important, practicing. He hits the nail on the head here. You can’t better if you aren’t practicing your art. I certainly need more of it and don’t do enough, but I am working on it and I plan on using some of the techniques in this chapter to help with that. I enjoyed how he puts it together with martial arts terms. I will be working on the Katas that he linked and other items. I don’t really think that I can write a whole lot about practicing as I think it speaks for itself. Without practice you get stale and lose your touch. I really like some of his ideas on picking a new language to practice with and finding an open source project to work with. I believe that all of these ideas will help to make me a better programmer as long as I put them to work and keep up what I have been doing. I am passionate about this and sometimes feel like I am behind the curve, but I just keep plugging away and learning more every day.