Re:Restructuring a giant, ancient codebase to make LibreOffi...
by vanderZwan on Thursday January 18, 2018 @05:17PM
(#16182080)
What's opaque about "write everything down, including your assumptions and what you are going to try before you try it, write it out in full, and don't worry too much about it being in a neat structure because it's more of a scratch-pad"?
His main point is that we focus too much on the software tools, and not enough on how we think about the software we are modifying.
I can say from experience that writing things out on paper without looking at the code works, and more people should do it. Like he states in the slide-deck: it lets you off-load mental burdens, and avoid the problem of forgetting the details of a complex problem in the process of being unravelled. It lets you get back into the work weeks or months later.
Writing messy pseudo-blog-posts in github issues and very long code comments is how I kept my sanity on a project where I was the sole programmer for two years.
His main point is that we focus too much on the software tools, and not enough on how we think about the software we are modifying.
I can say from experience that writing things out on paper without looking at the code works, and more people should do it. Like he states in the slide-deck: it lets you off-load mental burdens, and avoid the problem of forgetting the details of a complex problem in the process of being unravelled. It lets you get back into the work weeks or months later.
Writing messy pseudo-blog-posts in github issues and very long code comments is how I kept my sanity on a project where I was the sole programmer for two years.