Sebastien Lachance

Mind shift

<p>I was wondering when this day would come. When I’d start thinking in term of object. This change in paradigm was not easy. I started programming using the data-centric way and was submerged by it. I was struggling to get rid on this kind of thinking. I’ve read multiple book before : Agile Software Development, Object Thinking, Refactoring, etc. But this was hard to me. However, 6 months ago, I finally landed on an Agile team. I got a hard time changing the way I was thinking because I was sure that I was understanding object-oriented development.</p>

<p>For me, the revelation occurred in this team. There I was introduced to my first test-driven project. One of the team members and a consultant for the company was previously working for Object Mentor. I needed to be up to the task, and immerged myself completely into it. I was reading the code of the project regularly and tried to do the same thing. I made mistakes, lots of mistakes, but I learned from them (even if I was not being directed in the right way after making them, but this is another story). Unfortunately the project was put to an halt and I had to get back to the old project, the one that became so complicated that I had abandoned all hope of doing something right with it. I was wrong, this was a wonderful opportunity and this is where the mind shift occurred. I started doing some unit tests and when I was comfortable with the coverage of a certain part, refactor to reflect a more object-oriented and easier to understand ways. I learned about Inversion Of Control (IoC), Dependency Injection, Mocking, Domain-Driven Design and Design Pattern. I also started to read my books back. I re-read Code Complete, Refactor and Object-Design Heuristics, and I am planning to read a lot more. I also adopted many of the Agile practices. This was not hard, since I had worked on project that had big upfront design, and after every release, we were deploying every week a new versions because of the bugs we had found or enhancements the clients wanted. This was just the natural thing to do and I firmly believe this is a good road to follow.</p>

<p>Now, If I could only get a new challenge to push my limits and learn more!</p>

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