On discipline

I threw out a couple days worth of code a couple weeks ago.

I read somewhere that knowing that you can throw out code and start over should be uplifting and exhilarating. It's not. When I threw it out the topic branch in my local git repository, I was annoyed, I was disgusted, I was unhappy. Perhaps that has to do with why I threw it out.

I have this project I'm working on in my spare time. As I've mentioned before, I'm trying out BDD with RSpec and cucumber. And I came to a point that I realized that most of what I was doing was not behavior-driven. It wasn't even adhering to the YAGNI principle. I had a possible case, one that may not arise, and I was writing to try to meet it without a test case. I had realized I was doing this early on and instead of stopping then, I just said that I would run it through rcov and add tests later.

Sometimes I am very, very stupid.

The problem with BDD or TDD or any new way of doing things is that it requires discipline to properly follow them until you get in the habit of doing them. Once you're in the habit, it's not so hard but you have to get there first. Until then, you have to face your urges to use the old method, to take the quick way you've already learned, and deny them. It requires discipline.

And discipline, at least for me, is hard.

I will be trying again on this particular feature tonight or tomorrow night. Hopefully I will have the discipline this time.