I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I program computers for a living. I really enjoy programming. I think it has a lot to do with the order of it, as well as the problem solving. I really do pretty well at the problem solving. Unfortunately, I seem to be decent at creating the problem as well.

Today is a perfect example. I had been working on a test plan yesterday afternoon and this morning. I finally finished the first section of five sections around lunch time. As I realized this was taking WAY too long to write, and would be even worse for whoever had to test it. I knew I had created a problem that needed solving. Well, like most problems, they are best solved when you talk them out, so I talked it over with a co-worker.

Between the two of us, we came up with a shorter way to test the changes. Instead of testing each individual part of the data (which hadn’t changed), we could check that the code was pulling back the same data, and then spot check the other code changes. The new test plan was a good idea and it would work perfectly to verify that what was changed actually works. So I presented the new suggestions to my boss and he was OK with it.

So, over the course of lunch, my co-worker and I, in our discussion, threw out about a day’s worth of test plan in favor of the new method. I wasn’t too pleased with myself when I realized how long I had been working on the test plan that I was now throwing away. But that is the nature of the beast with programming. Sometimes the best thing to do is throw away what you have and start from scratch.

I had a bit of a better experience right before I left. The same co-worker came over and he had found a part of a different change that wasn’t working correctly. After explaining the problem to me, we started looking into it, me “driving” and him looking over my shoulder. It didn’t take long to find the problem, and within 15 minutes the fix was made and he was back testing. Only this time with success. In the words of Hannibal Smith, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

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