97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

Chapter 23. Feedback Loops

Liz Keogh

• Because our product managers don’t know what they want, they find out from the customers. They sometimes get this wrong.

• Because our product managers don’t know everything about systems, they invite other experts to become stakeholders in the project. The stakeholders get it wrong.

• Because I don’t know what to code, I find out from our product managers. We sometimes get this wrong.

• Because I make mistakes while writing code, I work with an IDE. My IDE corrects me when I’m wrong.

• Because I make mistakes in understanding the existing code, I use a statically typed language. The compiler corrects me when I’m wrong.

• Because I make mistakes while thinking, I work with a pair. My pair corrects me when I’m wrong.

• Because my pair is human and also makes mistakes, we write unit tests. Our unit tests correct us when we’re wrong.

• Because we have a team that is also coding, we integrate with their code. Our code won’t compile if we’re wrong.

• Because our team makes mistakes, we write acceptance tests that exercise the whole system. Our acceptance tests will fail if we’re wrong.

• Because we make mistakes writing acceptance tests, we get three amigos together to talk through them. Our amigos will tell us if we’re wrong.

• Because we forget to run the acceptance tests, we get our build to run them for us. Our build will tell us if we’re ...