Painless Functional Specifications (2000) | Hacker News Reader

Painless Functional Specifications (2000)

joelonsoftware.com

2 pointsLAC-Tech3 comments

I'm working on YAML->SQL converter at https://yaml2sql.netlify.app without any spec (yet). That helps me explore problem at the same time of hacking on the real code, as well as fixing the bugs, and also help me see the blocking/maintainance points from the code design.

Thinking about spec before really writing code doesn't work (at least for me).

TLDR is, coding is exploration, it should come before real spec is written.

In the case of YAML->SQL, functional requirements don't make a heck of a lot of the sense. You already have a really clear idea of how you'll interact with it and what it will do, presumably:

    myconverter input.yaml output.sql

I think a lot of more GUI applications would benefit from them however.

Presumably you don't know much about SQL semantics, what's the spec will you know ? Do you wait until you understand full SQL semantics before implementation ? Or you just code as you go ?

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