2003/01/02

“With TDD, you create an automated test first, and only then write the minimal amount of code that you can get away with to satisfy that test. Every time someone finds a new bug, it gets added to the fully automated test suite. Then the programmer writes the minimal amount of code to make the new test pass (which makes the bug go away).” —From Test Driving Test Driven Development, a column I've written that will appear in the next issue of STQE Magazine. More paper! You can't read it online, but the nice folks at STQE have offered 15% off the usual subscription price for Joel on Software readers.

Bookmark this: DLL Help is a complete database of every DLL Microsoft has ever shipped, and which versions of which product it shipped with. I'm trying to figure out which of the 7 versions of scrrun.dll in the wild is causing problems for the occasional CityDesk user.

A good introduction to Dr. Deming's philosophy of management: Four Days with Dr. Deming summarizes the four day seminars Deming used to give to business leaders. Key insight: you can't improve your team's performance just by picking some numeric measurement and then rewarding or punishing people to optimize it. Problem one: the variability in the measurement may be caused by a broken system that only management can change, not by individual performance. Problem two: people may optimize locally to improve that one measurement, even at the cost of hurting the performance of the company as a whole. If you're in a rut constantly trying to figure out how to rejigger your employees' incentive systems, this book will get you out of it.

My new book is here! Apress has just published a new collection of 36 essays from Joel on Software, aptly named More Joel on Software. Get yours today! Available from Amazon.com or wherever fine cheese is sold.

About the Author: I’m your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz—the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot—the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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