A conversation
My younger brother has decided to learn to program computers. He asked were to start, so I pointed him at the Ruby on Rails Tutorial and the Pickaxe book. After finishing the tutorial and part of the book, we had this conversation via text message: Him : So, I really like rspec. It just makes sense to write code that way. Me : That's awesome! :-) Him : I think I told you that I finished that book and have been working on pickaxe. I just did the rspec section, and I don't understand how people would want to jump into a program without writing tests beforehand. Me : I know, right? But people do. Him : Writing tests before let's you break it up into easy to accomplish goals and when you get one to pass you know it works. And if something you do later breaks it you know right away. Me : Yep. I know. And yet, a lot of people don't get it. I took away 2 thoughts from this conversation: Don't be afraid to start with testing early in educating a new d...