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copied!<p>To paraphrase Douglas Adams, programming is easy. You only need to stare at a blank screen until your forehead bleeds. For people who are squeamish about their foreheads, my ideal architect-and-build for the bigger problems would go something like this. (For smaller problems, like George Jempty I can only recommend <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1645768/revisions">Feynman's Algorithm</a>.) </p> <p>What I write is couched in an on-site business setting but there are analogues in open-source or distributed teams. And I can't pretend that every, or even most, projects pan out this way. This is just the series of events that I dream about, and occasionally come to pass.</p> <ol> <li><p>Get advanced, concise warning of what the problem is likely to look like. This is <em>not</em> the full, final meeting, but an informal discussion. Uncertainty in certain specification details is fine, as long as the client (or manager) is honest. Then take a piece of paper or text editor, and try to condense what you've learned down to five essential points, and then try to condense <em>those</em> to a single sentence. <em>Be happy you can picture the core problem(s) to be solved without referencing any of your documentation.</em></p></li> <li><p>Think about it for maybe a couple of hours, maybe playing with code and prototyping, but not with a view to the full architecture: you should even do other stuff, if you've time, or go for a walk. It's great if you can learn about a job an hour before home time in order to deliver a decision around midday the next day, so you get to sleep on it. Spend your time looking at potential libraries, frameworks, data standards. Try to tie together at least two languages or resources (say, Javascript on PHP-generated HTML; or get a Python stub talking RPC to a web service). <em>Flesh out the core problems; zoom in on the details; zoom out to make sure the whole shape is still distinct and makes sense.</em></p></li> <li><p>Send any questions to the client or manager well in advance of a meeting to discuss both the problem and your proposed solution. Invite as many stakeholders and your programming peers along as is convenient (and as your manager is happy with.) Explain the problem back to them, as you see it, then propose your solution. <em>Explain as much as you can; pitch the technical details at your audience, but also let your explanations fill in more details in your own mental model.</em></p></li> <li><p>Iterate on 2 and 3 until everyone is happy. Happiness is domain-specific. Your industry might require UML diagrams and line-item quotations, or it might be happy with something jotted on a whiteboard with an almost invisible drywipe marker. <em>Make sure everyone has the same expectations of what you're about to build.</em></p></li> <li><p>When your client or manager is happy for you to start, clear everything. Close Twitter, instant messenger, IRC and email for an hour or two. Start with the overall structure as you see it. Drop some of your prototype code in and see if it feels right. If it doesn't, change the structure as early as possible. But most of all make sure your colleagues give you a couple of hours of space. Try not to fight fires in this time. <em>Begin with a good heart and cheer, and interest in the project. When you're bogged down later on you'll be glad of the clarity that came out of those first few hours.</em></p></li> </ol> <p>How your programming proceeds from there depends on what it actually is, and what tasks the finished code needs to perform. And how you ultimately architect your code, and what external resources you use, will always be dictated by your experience, preference and domain knowledge. But give your project and its stakeholder team the most hopeful, most exciting and most engaged start you can.</p>

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