Incremental Development

We’ll be developing this application incrementally. We won’t attempt to specify everything before we start coding. Instead, we’ll work out enough of a specification to let us start and then immediately create some functionality. We’ll try ideas, gather feedback, and continue with another cycle of minidesign and development.

This style of coding isn’t always applicable. It requires close cooperation with the application’s users, because we want to gather feedback as we go along. We might make mistakes, or the client might ask for one thing at first and later want something different. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. The earlier we discover we’ve made a mistake, the less expensive it’ll be to fix that mistake. All in all, with this style of development, there’s a lot of change as we go along.

Because of this, we need to use a toolset that doesn’t penalize us for changing our minds. If we decide we need to add a new column to a database table or change the navigation among pages, we need to be able to get in there and do it without a bunch of coding or configuration hassle. As you’ll see, Ruby on Rails shines when it comes to dealing with change. It’s an ideal agile programming environment.

Along the way, we’ll be building and maintaining a corpus of tests. These tests will ensure that the application is always doing what we intend to do. Not only does Rails enable the creation of such tests, but it even provides you with an initial set of tests each time you define a new controller.

On with the application.