As I hoped, once I had a small failing test it didn't take too long to find the problem and fix it. It didn't make me feel too stupid (at least no more than the usual when you figure out a bug) since it was a fairly subtle synchronization issue. Have I ever mentioned that concurrency is hard?
The funny (in a sick way) part was that after all that, I still had the original problem. Ouch. Obviously, the problem I isolated and fixed wasn't the only one.
Pondering it more I realized that the bugs I'd been chasing were all originating from a certain aspect of the design. And I realized that even if I managed to chase them down and squash them, that it was still going to end up fragile. Some future modification was likely to end up with the same problem.
So I reversed course, deleted most of the code I wrote in the last few days, and took a simpler approach. Not quite as fast, but simplicity is worth a lot. It only took a half hour or so to make the changes.
Amazingly, all the tests now pass! It took me a minute to grasp that fact. What does that mean when there are no error messages? Oh yeah, that must mean it's working - that's weird.
I'll have to write a bunch more tests before I feel at all confident that it's functional, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. I feel a certain amount of reluctance to start writing more tests - I'd like to savor the feeling of success before I uncover a bunch more problems!
1 comment:
Congrats!
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