Occasionally, especially in times between (paid) projects, I program solo. This morning, I realised that I operate in two ‘modes’ which slightly differ in the way I leave the project I’m working on in the evenings.
One way of working is when I program along while working through a book. Currently, I’m reading ‘Agile Web Development with Rails 7‘ (by Sam Ruby & Dave Thomas). I very much leave the ‘Depot’ app (the example application used in the book) with a completed section and passing tests. The Part of the next section is a fresh starting point in the following morning.
The other way is when I’m progressing in a project, i.e. a library or tool, I work on. In these cases, I prefer to leave a (read: one) failing test in the evening, so it’s easy to remember what I was planning to do in the morning: To fix/implement the code to make the tests pass. Note though, that I do not commit & push this failing tests to version control.
This is neither a new nor my idea. Nick Holden wrote about in 2018 already, in his blog post ‘Try ending today with a failing test for a great start tomorrow‘.
Have you noticed differences in developing software (whether it’s the coding, testing, UX, or any other aspect of it), between times of working alone versus working in a team? What are they? I would be seriously interested in hearing about this.
