[plt-scheme] Hit People Over the Head with HtDP

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 3:48 PM,  <danprager at optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> As I have risen in seniority over the years and gained confidence and judgement I have been able to encourage / persuade my
> team-members about DBC and we have worked on blending it in various ways with test-driven development (TDD) and more
> recently functional integration testing (FIT).  I really need to write this stuff up ;-)

When you combine DbC with TDD, you can make some drastic improvements
as you have mentioned.

Interestingly, the advent of "Inversion of Control" containers makes
for a pretty straightforward way of doing DbC by wrapping objects
within their contract; thought that approach relies largely on
experienced people like yourself who is willing to make a judgment
call rather than relying on the "thought leaders" to think for you (as
is often so welcomed by most today).

> While I have assigned OOSC2 chapters for reading, I am yet to see anyone else pick up the book and read it several times as I
> did.

I read it twice. I had to read it twice. It was a great read, both
times; but the second was better.

> So, my experience has been one of learning cool / advanced things and then trying to apply them with more accepted tools. > It's a nice trick if your team is smart and open to new ideas.

I am not finished with HtDP, but I have found, as everyone here has
said; that the lesson learned are applicable to any language. The
essence of how to program adds the value to the book; it just so
happens they used Scheme (for some specific *good* reasons, but
nonetheless the ideas are what matter).