Author: n_n_hui

Holy crap, you can apply TDD to design as well! Just simply list your use cases and turn the case through your UI, or design, and see the UI machine could handle the scenarios. It’s kinda like a Turing machine. You have a bunch of input, and you have the rules to process the input, would the machine halt, or freak out? LOL.

My printmaking professor really asked me be more responsive to what I have already made. Sometimes planning could only go so far, and we need to learn how to respond to the facts already laid in front of us.

Same with prototyping, I guess. We step one foot forward, and make one step at a time, and each step is a direct response to the previous step. If we keep taking the most obvious step, the result should be pretty good. This sounds like a pretty algorithm for optimizing for a good outcome, maybe trying to get to the best outcome.

I should look into the algorithms of life book to see what other computer scientists say. I feel like life is about a search algorithm for finding the optimal route without getting tricked by the local maximum.

Yet life is not a search algorithm… the context life operates in is far more complex than an algorithm. I am not sure what I am trying to say here, but I think small tests in printmaking could help me find a better route than just blindly going in.

Turns out just simply typing up dummy data structures do wonders in prototyping. Also prototyping just the front end does wonders to the product. Who would have thought?! Mr. Beck, thanks for the tip that just simply type in stuff to pass the test. I did the same with the front end prototype data structure, and it saved me a lot of time.

I start to feel like we make big mistakes when our steps are too big, and we easily go off the path and miss the turning points. It’s kinda like hiking. If you run too fast and you could easily miss the trail, and do unnecessary work. Sometimes it’s best just to make small steps and make small progresses.

I like keeping a dev journal, and I feel like I should mix the dev journal and the TDD journal together. TDD book is actually pretty useful. Just a few chapters already gave me a lot to work on. I also need to finish the step/to-do app. So we will just combine the dev journal and TDD journal together.

In the meantime, use localStorage to create the best experience yet. Prototype until the interactions are perfect, then we will look into the backend.

All a sudden it’s day 4 already. I didn’t do any Kent Beck’s reading, but I also did learn a lot. It’s important to not to over develop your code, and only write code and tests when they are needed. Remember, Red, Green, Refactor (remove duplications).

I think I need to get to a prototype the quickest before I dive in deep into the data models and such. It’s important to start with the end user experience and work out the details backward.

Knowing so, how should I build this prototype, and how should I store the data and such?

Well, I didn’t learn much today from the TDD exercise, in terms of TDD. But I did learn the value of consistency and little progress no matter how small. It was difficult to start the study around 10:30 at night, after a long day. But I did it, and resolve a bug that could potentially stop my study. I guess I did learn a lot today, that:

• Consistency is so important
• Keeping posting post is important, back to point 1
• Nothing google can’t solve if you have the right question
• Reduce duplication is very important in TDD
• I need to do these studies early in the morning

I am slowly learning the red, green, refactor approach today. Just wrote a bunch of tests for a fundamental class this afternoon, and looks like the tests are really delivering their value, for catching errors and preventing unnecessary operations on the data structure.

Not sure what I need to do tomorrow. But I need to find time and dedicate the next few weeks to learn TDD, and then Refactoring.

Programming is getting fun again, after 15 years of absence from it, LOL.

Caravaggio was good(in terms of technique) and controversial in his time (sometimes I do wonder if he used mirrors and stuff to get those cinematic images/paintings). Georges de La Tour was really good and the Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds is definitely a conversation piece, and I don’t think it’s controversial. Maybe being a conversation piece doesn’t necessarily mean being controversial.

Yet I feel like sometimes in the artwork you need to be controversial to get famous, and to get famous is how you make money in the art world, say Jeff Koons. But I don’t want to be Jeff Koons. I want to be Käthe Kollwitz. There are more important reasons to make art than being famous and(or) rich. Although being a rich artist is very helpful in making art. Jim Henson proved that.