Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

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Thu, 16 Jun 2005

Where to put code

On the agile-testing list, we were discussing how reuse could work in an Agile project. How do you find code you can reuse? What prevents you from reinventing it? I rambled for a bit, then finished with this:

As I paraphrased at my PhD prelim exam (to unimpressive effect), "Knowledge is of two kinds. You can know a thing, or you can know where to find it." (Samuel Johnson) In a system that's constantly migrating toward a good structure, the problem of knowing where to look it up is simpler than in the typical big ball of mud system. You can look in the place it ought to be. If it's not there, there's a reasonable chance it's not anywhere.

To this, Kevin Lawrence gave this wonderful advice about what to do after you don't find the code and start writing it yourself:

Put it where you looked.

He gives the C2 wiki as the source, but I can't find it there.

## Posted at 17:16 in category /coding [permalink] [top]