On Saturday 02 Jan 2010 9:08:51 pm Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 3:42 PM, jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:
IMO the inputs BEFORE you write a single line of code is far more important than any number of bug fixers you are likely to get later. You miss this and you will have a full rewrite on the menu card.
It really depends a lot on the developers involved. There are some who prefer to rewrite sections again and again till things are perfect (prototyping). Others prefer to have a flow chart, ERD/class diagram, etc before they write a single line of code.
let us give a simple example - X writes software in secrecy, and when 'complete' he releases it - Y downloads, tries out and starts using it. Meanwhile X gets huge amount of feed back - he makes backward incompatible changes. Y does an svn up and finds his code is not working - the sql has changed drastically. X has not bothered to provide a migration script - he has just changed the sql. And had to change it so drastically that Y has to zap his db and re-enter the data.
If X had been open from the beginning, at the most Y would have had to face small incremental changes throughout the process - may be non backward incompatible, but still incremental and manageable.