Aside on testing: I was surprised in re-reading Fred Brooks how cloose he sounds to unit-testing, in Mythical Man Month, 2ed, pp.147-148. He suggests testing co

Aside on testing: I was surprised in re-reading Fred Brooks how cloose he sounds to unit-testing, in Mythical Man Month, 2ed, pp.147-148. He suggests testing components separately, before integrating, even though this requires lots of "scaffolding". Scaffolding includes dummy components, miniature file (minimal eg of a file format), "generators of test data, special analysis printouts, cross-reference table analyzers" (jigs and fixtures). "It is not unreasonable for there to be half as much code in scaffolding as there is in product". I end up writing a lot of the above kind of code - not as automated unit tests, but just as a way to make sure my code is doing what I think it's doing - just plain ol' testing. It can feel wasteful, so it was reassuring to hear Fred's take.