Being productive without coding

05 Apr 2013

I feel like I’ve been quite productive over the last day or so even if I haven’t written any code.

The requirements I had for a new feature were a little vague so I spent some time:

• investigating third-party open source libraries (in this case Ruby gems) that may have helped
• exploring the code base of our own application
• talking with stake-holders in order to clarify the scope and steer the first iteration of this feature towards gaining a small set of big wins for the users
• sketching a possible solution in brief notes rather than code
• reviewing my intended approach with a colleague

Now I’ve reached the point where I think it’s a good time to start coding.

Different people have different approaches to solving software problems. I’m quite systematic and methodical by nature.

In any case, I wanted to share this experience because I think that sometimes it pays to spend time thinking, exploring and talking before diving into coding.

Other posts

Previous post: Installing Ruby 1.8.7 with rbenv

More recently: On Happiness and Programming