[bug-myserver] "How to do something in 12 weeks" - a little humorous approach

[ivailo ilionov]

Giuseppe made a very usefuly suggestion to me to write a better plan on how will
the development of a webdav plugin procede. That is, i have to mark my
"milestones" ( goal ) for each week and after each week a evalation of
the progress
will be made, to see if the milestone was reached or there's still
work to be done
until it's reached.

It made me realize, that when people say that they want a detailed
plan, they're not
doing it out of boredom or to make newbies frustrated for not being
able to make a
plan with milestones. What they want is for programmers to be aware of what
they're doing, what should they be doing and how much have they already done.

And being a programmer with no real experience does not mean we have no
idea how to plan better. We just don't realize that usually that's
what we're doing
( like an animal instinct ). Deciding what should be written, from
where to begin,
marking(pee) each small goal towards the Big Goal ( working bug-free program ),
fixing bugs and refactoring if needed and after time refactoring again, because
we already see where the current design of the program is weak.

When we realize that, we just have to put some guessing at how much time will be
needed to reach each goal and a little extra time for unexpected events.

( the next level )

After years of doing this - to decide how to do things, to predict how
things will be
after we've taken certain actions - we'll be able to do more than just a simple
strategy plan - WE WILL BE ABLE TO BIND REALITY TO OUR WILL or TO LOOK
INTO THE FEATURE!

And I finally managed to do the second and as an example, here is the detailed
MyPlan about how I spent the 12 weeks:

        On may 23, the coding officialy begins.
        ( the day is also known as day Zero )

        [ Before day Zero ]
        I became more familiar with MyServer's api and now I have a better
        understanding of how it works ( maybe even than Daniele ).

        [ Day Zero ]
        Today I was happy and excited and I played doom all day to
        commemorate the beginning.

        [ Two weeks after day Zero ]
        I came up with a design for the plugin and it's integration with
        MyServer thanks to the helping hand and guidance of my mentor.

        [ Five weeks after day Zero ]
        Development had already began and is going smoothly. I'm smiling at
        the sight of my bug-free code.

        [ Six weeks after day Zero ]
        I've written tests for the code.

        [ Seven weeks after day Zero ]
        I start to forget some things, so now is a good time to write what
        I remember as documentation, and so I did.

        [ Ten weeks after day Zero ]
        I've had found a bug. The nasty creature had made his nest deep in
        my routines and data structures and it had made one hell number of
        a big family, with mutant bugs who didn't resemble him at all.

        Took me time to exterminate `em all. I also had to change things,
        things which had rotten because of the insects, but thanks to that
        I made them even better.

        [ Eleven weeks after day Zero ]
        Fixing the bugs took me a while, but thankfully I had enough time to
        finish everything. And thank you Giuseppe for reminding me to write
        a better schedule. Otherwise, I would have had freaked out if the bugs
        had starting popping out even before I've had start with the
programming.

        [ Sometime after the end of the GSoC ]
        Wow, I received a T-Shirt, cool... but hey why is it not black ?


Giuseppe, thanks for pointing out how easy it is to make a plan. I think I
understand now, what I only knew before. Of course, this is just a fun example.
I hope the others will forgive me for abusing the mail list like
that... but someone
told me to share : )

> <giuseppe> given 12 weeks I see..[-oo, 0] understand myserver, [0-2] design,
> [2-5] development, [6] write tests, [7-8] documentation, [9-10] fixing + 
> refactoring,
> [11] {whatever wasn't done in time}

> <giuseppe> let's move this subject on the ML :)
> <giuseppe> it is interesting to share with people
> <giuseppe> "how do something in 12 weeks" :)