Project X report

[prog]

X is chugging along nicely. The skeleton of the logic library is complete, and I'm now fleshing it out through writing a whole mess of unit tests, making sure all the muscles twitch just so. It's hard to imagine a time when I didn't make a habit of test-driven development, even though I started only a couple of years ago. Seeing the panel of lights glow green after adding code is a happy thing, and seeing some turn red is happier, in a way, because I know that here are errors I wouldn't have caught until much later without the tests handy.

I'm champing at the bit to start working on the UI, partly because it terrifies me. But I'm not letting myself do so until every class (or at least every class of class) has at least a couple of tests attached, and there are a lot of classes. There's probably another two or three full work-sessions of test-writing in front of me, and when I do start building the UI I know I will be on my knees thanking my past self for having the patience to do them first.

Moreover, it's past time to seriously engage the game's rights-holder about what they expect to see on their end of the licensing deal. I made a gesture towards this over email last month, and they acknowledged receipt, but we need to have an actual conversation. I've been putting it off because it's less fun than working on code by myself, but I have long since proven to myself that I can accomplish the technical end of this task. Time to refocus long enough to TCB.

Comments

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for: I've done the Google thing pretty heavily on this topic and not come up with anything that really does the job for me. I'll have a look at the book--a lot of good practise is language-independent.

Method-level testing is the kind of thing I use internal constraints for. Higher level testing, ideally with tests that can be tied to design goals, is the thing I'd really like to automate.