A questing about software design methodology
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I am planning to develop medium size library project for personal purpose. After documented the requirements, I designed an entity diagram. Now I am planning to define all classes, structs, enums and function body before coding the logic. As per my vision this method will help me to identify problems at the beginning, so that I can save the time to rewrite the logic. Is this a standard methodology? Is there any pre-defined method to do this? Thanks and regards, Thomas
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I am planning to develop medium size library project for personal purpose. After documented the requirements, I designed an entity diagram. Now I am planning to define all classes, structs, enums and function body before coding the logic. As per my vision this method will help me to identify problems at the beginning, so that I can save the time to rewrite the logic. Is this a standard methodology? Is there any pre-defined method to do this? Thanks and regards, Thomas
Well, it's an interesting approach and an admirable one. Unfortunately, practical experience shows that the reality will fall short because requirements change as most projects and a rigid approach means that it is harder to adapt to these changes. I prefer, now, a more fluid approach such as TDD coupled with SOLID architecture, which makes it easier to work with isolated simple to use classes.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
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Well, it's an interesting approach and an admirable one. Unfortunately, practical experience shows that the reality will fall short because requirements change as most projects and a rigid approach means that it is harder to adapt to these changes. I prefer, now, a more fluid approach such as TDD coupled with SOLID architecture, which makes it easier to work with isolated simple to use classes.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
But this is for my personal use. I am the coder and client So I am well aware of requirements. So are despite these problems, are you suggesting me to follow this mythology? Can you please suggest me any good read about this?
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But this is for my personal use. I am the coder and client So I am well aware of requirements. So are despite these problems, are you suggesting me to follow this mythology? Can you please suggest me any good read about this?
popchecker wrote:
So I am well aware of requirements.
Are you - you're a much better person than me then :-D ? Even on personal projects, I've ended up changing requirements as things have evolved. There are plenty of articles here on Code Project and the web about TDD, I'd start off with general purpose articles if I were you.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
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I am planning to develop medium size library project for personal purpose. After documented the requirements, I designed an entity diagram. Now I am planning to define all classes, structs, enums and function body before coding the logic. As per my vision this method will help me to identify problems at the beginning, so that I can save the time to rewrite the logic. Is this a standard methodology? Is there any pre-defined method to do this? Thanks and regards, Thomas
I salute your discipline, I have yet to create a design specification before the project is at least 80% done. A personal project tends to start as a data structure and flows naturally from there. If I screw up the structure I just fix redesign and move on. I use my personal development projects as learning experiences, usually built in a new tech/language so doing a bunch of design stuff before building it just seems silly. Data structures are pretty standard across all platforms but the internals of the app tend to be quite fluid. I am lucky in that even at work I can just build the solution and then create the doco after the fact (or not if I'm really lucky) after all my work projects are ALL POCs
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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I am planning to develop medium size library project for personal purpose. After documented the requirements, I designed an entity diagram. Now I am planning to define all classes, structs, enums and function body before coding the logic. As per my vision this method will help me to identify problems at the beginning, so that I can save the time to rewrite the logic. Is this a standard methodology? Is there any pre-defined method to do this? Thanks and regards, Thomas
If you are doing this for learning purposes, then I would say this is not a bad idea. For someone who is learning OO programming, I think it can be useful to sit down and draw out the class structure first because it helps them learn to think in terms of objects and how they interact. Experienced programmers can get away without doing this because they have the experience to know what the rough structure of the classes should be, and they can evolve that as they go. Newbies don't have that depth of knowledge to draw on so they can easily end up with a huge ball of mud that sort of works but isn't maintainable. I don't think you need to go right down to the level of detailing the function bodies and so on, but sketching out a class diagram will help to get things clear in your mind before you start and make sure that you can see the wood for the trees when you find yourself buried in the coding phase. But don't be afraid to deviate from it when you are coding if you find a better way to do things once you get started. It's a guide to help clarify your thinking, not a rigid plan to be mindlessly obeyed. It depends on how experienced you are at designing and building this sort of application.
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I salute your discipline, I have yet to create a design specification before the project is at least 80% done. A personal project tends to start as a data structure and flows naturally from there. If I screw up the structure I just fix redesign and move on. I use my personal development projects as learning experiences, usually built in a new tech/language so doing a bunch of design stuff before building it just seems silly. Data structures are pretty standard across all platforms but the internals of the app tend to be quite fluid. I am lucky in that even at work I can just build the solution and then create the doco after the fact (or not if I'm really lucky) after all my work projects are ALL POCs
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
This is about the same for me. For personal projects I tend to change design even more often as there is no one else involved I first have to consult with. So, while coding I end up noticing a different approach might be better after all, etc. and change the structure. When I learned programming they certainly did hammer into my brain that it's imperative to create detailed design sheets beforehand, but from my experience you should never go too much into detail unless required client side as it makes you far to inflexible. And once you started changing designs, you should wait to change the documentation until the project is done or otherwise you end up wasting time to redo the documentation every time you change something. I think it's best to design a concept and basic classes/methods beforehand and then fill in the rest when you really have coded it to not end up documentation a program that never came to be.
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I salute your discipline, I have yet to create a design specification before the project is at least 80% done. A personal project tends to start as a data structure and flows naturally from there. If I screw up the structure I just fix redesign and move on. I use my personal development projects as learning experiences, usually built in a new tech/language so doing a bunch of design stuff before building it just seems silly. Data structures are pretty standard across all platforms but the internals of the app tend to be quite fluid. I am lucky in that even at work I can just build the solution and then create the doco after the fact (or not if I'm really lucky) after all my work projects are ALL POCs
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH