by Eric Hosick (erichosick@interfacevision.com)
We are a few years into the code base for Interface Vision. An executive decision was made to rewrite the entire system using BDD.
This isn’t exactly an easy decision because there are many hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Over the years, the code has been re-written as we discovered mistakes in our original approach to engineering Interface Vision. However, the current version is architecturally strong.
Of course, a lot of the tricky stuff has been solved and the re-write will not be as difficult as the original so I don’t see it taking two years.
I’ve just finished my first big step of re-writing Interface Vision using BDD and all I can say is that it is amazing! During this 6 hour session I did not even one time ask myself if I had introduced any bugs. Not one time did I have to debug the code.
I had one mistake in the Gherkin due to an upper-case/lower-case mistake. Other than that, I am confident that my code base is 100% covered.
And it is a really nice feeling.
After programming for decades and even using TDD I never felt confident that I wasn’t breaking my behaviour: I wasn’t breaking how the system worked.
For the first time ever, I don’t have a single worry in my head that I’ve made a mistake. I don’t have to worry that something isn’t right. I know that within all that code I’ve just added, there will be no horrible debug session waiting for me. I now have a feeling of Oneness with programming. I am not fighting programming anymore! It is really relaxing.
I can not even start to describe how much I hate debugging. I’ve been doing it since I was 14 when I wrote my first program. I’ve been doing it up until recently. Now I know I will NEVER have to debug again.
The worst part about debugging is that it really slows me down. Not because it is more difficult than programming or that I’m not good at it. It slows me down because I always procrastinate when I know I have to start debugging something. Sometimes I’ll stop working on something for days because of it.
As I’ve said before, and if I haven’t then I guess I’ll say it now, BDD is the biggest advancement in 20 years both in terms of the concept and tools that implement it. BDD, conceptually, may have been here for a while. However, it is now so easy to drive your development using it… Well there is no reason not to do it.
I will never have to debug again! I hope.
