Alien Experiment Laboratories

Specifying The Problem

Posted by Chief Experimenter in Journal, Progress at 1:05 pm.

1 Comment.

All programming tasks are essentially the same: you have a problem, and a solution is required.

In this case, the problem is “I want a neat game to play and all the new ones suck” and the solution is “Well, then, write one, you big lazy gimboid”.

OK, maybe not that simple. The basic game idea needs to be specified, then fleshed out. Otherwise, I might start trying to write Space Invaders and end up with Zork III. Or something.

Writing documentation is sucky, but it matters. The general spec. is important as a base on which to build. It reminds me what it was I was trying to do in the first place, and is the foundation of a successful project.

Sure, it might evolve somewhat, but it’s the foundation nonetheless.

Those foundations have now been built, and I’m ready to put together a rather more detailed low-level spec, where I decide just how to convert my bright (hah!) ideas into code.

Clearly those years of working for “large telecomms switch manufacturer” and dealing with their quality compliance has paid off. When I was a kid I could write the entire thing in BASIC in the time it took to do the general spec. But I’d more than likely have written a menu screen then moved onto my Next Big Idea without ever finishing the first. (I wrote some really neat menu screens back in the day.)

My increasingly aged brain, on the wrong end of two decades worth of close-quarters CRT radiation, can’t recall the fine details for long enough, and I can’t sit down for 10 straight hours and write a game from nothing more than an idea any more even if it could.

So I document the process instead, like a good little programmer.