Recent Developments: Developing Future Development

In response to recent buzz around the idea of instant feedback in development environments:

• http://vimeo.com/36579366
• http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/26/connecting-to-your-creation/
• http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table?ref=category

Anything that tightens the feedback loop will increase velocity, so approaches like the ones espoused by Bret & Chris will definitely have a positive impact, although we may need to develop more advanced visualization techniques to help when the state of the system is not naturally visual. (http://tenaciousc.com/)

I am also convinced that there are a few more steps (in addition to instant feedback) that we need to take as well:

Firstly, the development environment needs to encourage (or enforce) a range of always-on continuous development automation, including unit-testing, static-analysis, linting, documentation generation etc... This should include automated meta-tests such as mutation-based fuzz testing so that the unit-test coverage itself is tested. This helps us to have confidence that we have not missed any regressions creeping in. (To compensate for our inability to pay attention to everything all of the time)

Secondly, refactoring tools need to be supported, so that code can be mutated easily and the solution-space explored in a semi-automated manner. (To compensate for the fact that we can only type at a limited speed).

Thirdly, we need to start using pattern recognition to find similarities in the code that people write, so we can be guided to find other people and other software projects so that we can either re-use code if appropriate, or share experiences and lessons learned otherwise. (To compensate for the fact that we know a vanishingly small part of what is knowable).