Tests allow you to be experimental

One thing that I love about unit tests is the fact that they allow you to be a bit experimental. There are parts of code that I understand why they were written in a certain way (I could have written them!) but I don't like it. They just have a bad, icky feeling about them. So I think of a new way to write the code, comment out the old code, play around, and as long as my new, cleaner, simpler solution passes all the tests, it gets checked in.

There is such a freedom that you feel when you have tests that you can't get without. I often wonder how other people (and me) programmed without having a test suite. How did we make changes? I still can't believe how simple unit tests are, and just how powerful they are. Crazy.

Listening to: Chicane - Saltwater Original

Update: Ryan had some excellent comments about this. I totally agree with the "if it an't broke, don't fix it" approach. In the case that I talked about above, it was because of a requirement change that I allowed myself to change the code, not because I felt like it. That's one thing that I find about XP: nothing is new or super "cutting edge", it seems to take a lot of best practises and common sense. But like a lot of other things, it becomes more than the sum of its parts. I can see that as being one of the road blocks for adopting XP, but that's another blog post altogether.

Funny evolution

Anyone else think it's a little funny that at first OS's came free with your computer hardware; then as costs of hardware dropped (i.e. fell like a stone), they started to charge for the OS and other sw; now "free" sw is gaining ground again but instead of just making money off the sw, it's all subscription packages? I just think that it's interesting...

[end of random thought]

Blog spam

Well, with increased visibility comes increased spam. Today I was hit with my first big attack of blog spam. It was definally over 300, but I would guess that it was closer to 500 spam. Really nasty stuff too. People are sick. I'm just really disgusted right now. Time for a run.

Giving our lives away, or just more open?

Some interesting comments from Matthew Langham. That's one thing that I have not thought of before. The 'net as a medium allowing us not only to communicate faster and more open, but it is also distributing the information, our information, out of our control. This goes back to comments from Ryan about when you publish your blog (and everything else), you loose control over it. There are copies out there floating around that you would have no idea that they exist, let alone the ability to remove them, edit them, or choose who will see them.

I can see this as being a huge change to our society and I bet we won't even have noticed it till it's all done. In a couple of generations, I bet it will be a strange thought that you will not be able to find what used to be considered very personal info / data in a public forum. Imagine that your grandkids will be able to check out when you were blogging about that hot chick or getting really drunk last night.

All the data will still be personal to someone, but not most people. I think that the effect of this will be just that society will get more relaxed (which I think is a good thing). Maybe it will also mean that people will behave more consistently in different groups because members of each group will be able to see how the person behaves in the other group, but I doubt it. That's too much of a change.

I guess that in a way this is what we have been taught to do since we were children: share with others.

Listening to: Groove Armada - I See You Baby

WinXP SP2

My computer downloaded WinXP SP2, but I'm a little leery of installing it. Has anyone else done it, and if so, has anyone had any troubles with it? God, I should make backups...

Made the switch

After being frustrated with mozilla 7.2 not having a spell checker (for forms) anymore, I finally made the move to firefox. Then I installed spellbound and the Noia 2.0 theme. It's only been about 5 minutes, but I think that I like it. It actually does seem faster, but maybe it's all in my head. Either way, I can spell check things again. (and my browser seems mac-like, which is a strange feeling).

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - Sell, Sell, Sell - Kazoo

Program lanuage inventor or serial killer?

Just for fun, see if you can identify people who are computer language inventors, and who are serial killers. Thanks to Laura for the link. My score was 5, Andrew's was 5, and Aleks's was 8. ;-P