To those in school who hate creating design docs.

[wyrd]

Going through school Ive had teachers who forced us to do pseudo-code on our pathetic little programs that were constructed with 2-3 pages of code. I kept thinking "what is this, a joke? What the heck do I need pseudo-code for? I wont ever need this junk." LOL I always programmed the entire thing first and then wrote pseudo-code based off the actual finished code. I honestly never once ran into any problems doing this, and I can honestly say writing the pseudo-code first would of made the project take even longer.

A warning to those who think like me; I have eaten my words and was forced to swallow. I took on a "small" business app to improve my programming. In short, its a mess and boy do I wish I spent more time on disign docs then just simply scribbling some ideas and functionality onto a few pieces of paper. In the future not only will this be a pain in the rear to edit or change, but Ill probably also need to take in some seriously considerations as to re-designing and re-programming my entire app if I want it to be more flexible.

*shakes head in self pitty* This is why I wish teachers would teach from a more "real world" perspective, rather then the dinky assignments they give us and expect us to learn from. Is it really so hard to build a large program throughout the semester so we have 1 real world app at the end, rather then 50 useless ones? *mumbles and finishes ranting about classes*

 

[Madz]

But in professional line this doesnt happens, you can not write code unless you are sure what you are going to do it. First of all you need to make an architecture. and then a stretegy of "how to implement it". in small level projects it works to directly go to the code section but in enterprise level this dont. just where thousands of lines of codes ......

Remeber one thing

The time you spend on designing before wrting code save doubles of time after writing code.

 

[wyrd]

But in professional line this doesnt happens, you can not write code unless you are sure what you are going to do it.

I read all the time about horribly designed apps in the real world and how they ended up having to scrap the original design docs and start over. If it never happened then there wouldnt be books directed at professionals written about this very thing.

 

[Madz]

My Dear

They is just a simple confusion between us, i was just thinking you are saying that Psudo-Code is useless and i was telling you that in Enterprise Level Applications with out any architectal design it is not possible to design any application with desired features. you always need to keep in mind what we want and how it sould be implemented.

 

[hog]

Wyrd, I am in a similar boat. I have always taken on board what is required as an outline for an app then designed it a section at a time, usually with no external docs. Plenty of comments in the code though.

This method always produces an end app that the users want and can use far quicker than if I were to spend months analysing all the ifs and buts. As the user asks for modifications I add them no problem.

This method has the down side that further down the line while developing I usually have to go back and modify some earlier code which can be a bummer.

So does anyone have some advise on how to pre-think an app design prior to writting it? Most of the code/obstacles I program for only come to mind whilst Im coding it??