I’ve been working on a fairly tricky patch of code, and I am starting to see a pattern in my strategy. Because this part of the program is so delicate, anything I do might break it.<\/p>\n
So my general strategy has been to make one small change, test it immediately, and see whether things blow up. If it all still looks good, then I can start from there and make another small change.<\/p>\n
But if anything has gone wrong, I undo whatever was the last thing I did. And then I try something else.<\/p>\n
It feels kind of like hopping from stone to stone to cross a pond. You slowy proceed across by putting one foot down to test whether there is something solid there.<\/p>\n
If the stone supports your weight, you shift to that stone and keep going. Otherwise, you pick up your foot and try another stone.<\/p>\n
I suspect that a lot of the progress we make in life actually follows this pattern: step, test, retreat. And then step again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been working on a fairly tricky patch of code, and I am starting to see a pattern in my strategy. Because this part of the program is so delicate, anything I do might break it. So my general strategy has been to make one small change, test it immediately, and see whether things blow … Continue reading “Step, test, retreat”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27339,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27338\/revisions\/27339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}