Re: question

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Bill Mill wrote:
>
> Just a quick question for you: what do you mean by "prototyping" and 
> "spec"?  For me, on a system like pyblosxom, "prototyping" means hacking 
> on the source and "spec" is talking about what I did on the 
> pyblosxom-devel mailing list.  Do you propose something more formal than 
> that?

Figure I'll define the process a little more as I see it should be done.

"prototyping" is what you do when you're trying to figure out how to 
accomplish the mission you're trying to accomplish.  It typically entails 
some poking around, but you shouldn't be writing so much code that you've 
implemented the whole thing when you're done the prototype.  The prototype 
should give you enough knowledge to adequately write a specification.

The specification should explicitly state what the mission is, then talk 
about the changes to the codebase to accomplish the mission, and then talk 
about possible ramifications this might have, outstanding issues, so on 
and so forth.  The PEPs are specifications, though I think PyBlosxom is 
small enough that we don't need write-ups as comprehensive as the PEPs 
are.

The specification then gets sent out to the pyblosxom-devel mailing list 
where we all read it and think about it in terms of the things we know as 
individuals.  Then comments go around and some discussion and everyone 
typically votes so on so forth.

If it's approved, then coding begins and all that gets checked into CVS 
unless some other process was specified in the discussion.


So, prototyping is not the act of writing the code, but rather the act of 
doing whatever it is you need to do to get an understanding of what's 
going on, what components are involved, and what changes need to be made 
in order to write an adequate specification.  By nature, prototype code is 
written without a full understanding of what's going on.  It's generally 
hacked together--not designed.

Simple bug fixes can probably skip this whole process, but the checkin 
comments should be adequate enough that other people can see what's going 
on.  Having said that, the last round of my checkin comments have kind of 
sucked.

That's what I'd like in the process.  For the most part, it's sort of what 
has happened in PyBlosxom land though I don't recall if we were ever 
formal about "this is the process...  blah blah blah."

/will


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