I usually don't brag, but I being able to sit with a laptop and write while the wind blows a cool 70 degrees Fahrenheit in front of the Carribbean is definitely nice.
I spent the last 1.5 hours working on a proposal for my $writing_project, which I have high hopes for. The project involves a subject which I have become more and more interested in, especially during last semester.
This past semester I toiled through Advanced Writing for the Technical Professions, one of the various huge writing courses that every Northeastern student has to endure. While the teacher didn't let me do my $writing_project, I did end up composing a solid research paper on test-driven development, one of the emerging Extreme Programming practices to improve code quality. I showed off a study by the IBM Retail Store Solutions as well as how Virginia Tech and MIT's AI lab are successfully using test-driven development in the classroom. I also included and explained a kickass 3D graph which I'm sure helped get me the valuable 48/50 points.
I've begun to rewrite Cadubi using test-driven development, and it's been going well. I use the functionality I expect in a test and then create the minimal amount of code necessary to make the test pass. Writing the minimal amount of code prevents me from trying to think ahead and write methods that I'll never use --- or worse, methods that I create, don't test, and then attempt to use later on. I'm liking it.
Now, the interesting part: Cadubi is a graphical application for the console... How can I run a test to determine if the marquee tool indeed drew a rectangle in the correct location? How do I test if the help screen correctly draws over the editor? These are things that I don't think I can script easily, let alone write tests for beforehand. Maybe I could simulate a console for Cadubi to write to and test whether the fake console contains certain strings...
PS. Augh! No-see-um bites! Stupid little flies. It's not all paradise -- these things itch like hell!
PPS. It's dark now and I'm being attacked by large moths. There's a hole in my jeans and I fear them flying in and fluttering around. Also, they like root beer.
And that ain't Celsius!
GO MOTHS GO!!
