Anecdote: Broken Glass and Bare Feet

One of my cats shattered a vase, the other day...and I mean shattered.

Space is Getting In

There are times when compromises and shortcuts actually make sense.

Imagine you live on a space station and a small meteorite has punctured the shell. There is probably a right way to fix it and, ultimately, you'll want to apply that fix.

Right now, as a friend of mine once characterized it, space is getting in.

A Performance Story from an Old Job

I used to work at a place called Rogue Wave Software.

It was my first real job and a fantastic place to cut my teeth. Even though it was the '90's, the developers there had a better concept of what software design was than a lot of the developers I've met, since.

One little story that still amuses me to this day involves one of their products, DBTools.h++ (later SourcePro DB). DBTools.h++ had a very object-oriented design. Even today, that would be true but it was especially true at the time.

This anecdote is about how that design held up to other approaches with regards to performance.

Object-Oriented Performance

Long ago, in a land now distant to me, I worked for a very successful company.

They were the kind of company that wasn't successful because they were good at software development. They were good at something else and they had to do some software development to make that offering in the modern era.

I was brought into one team by a friend of mine in order to change their thinking. Years later, I heard they still reference me as the reason why they write tests first.

A Personal Example of Changing Mindset by Creating a Habit

A few years back, I wanted to start eating steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast. I had high cholesterol. I believed this lifestyle-change would impact it in a beneficial way. If I was right (I was) it would obviate the need for statins.

After languishing in excuses for a while, I decided it was a matter of discipline. I was going to do it. I would eat oatmeal every day for a week.

My Pre-TDD Years

When I was initially exposed to test-driven development's precursor, test-first programming, I immediately sensed the value.

Yet I didn't take the leap, right away. It required a change in my mindset and in my habits. Those things were hard and thus deferred. So years passed with me saying to myself "I really should write the tests for this, first".

What broke me out of the rut was when a test engineer said "I really love your code."