Had an insight on why incremental programming is useful that I thought I'd share. We use a routine on our web-site to display our available courses and seminars. We have made it so one routine can give the information needed following the no redundancy rule.We were looking to add a new feature to this that would do a different kind of filtering than we currently do. My tendancy is to always do the minimum amount of functionality needed (Ya Ain't Gonna Need It). But I'll admit, my mind wondered - what happens when this is extended - that is, we need a more sophisticated rule? Well, if all goes right, we just change the database holding the information and the logic that runs it. Implementing the new change should only happen in one place.

As I was going through this mental check-list I confirmed that this was, in deed, correct. Then it hit me - this process of adding one thing at a time like this kind of enforces good design on me. I am worried that if I don't do this good design, then things will mess up. By not thinking ahead, I have to have high quality code. This has two benefits:

1. my code is less complex because it is doing less
2. my code is of higher quality because I know I have to be prepared for it to do more

Technorati Tags: Testing

tag with del.icio.us