3/16/2026 at 11:57:14 AM
Reminds me of the best saying I ever got from my CS professor. She would make us first write out our code and answer the question, "What will the output be?" before we were allowed to run it."If you don't know what you want your code to do, the computer sure as heck won't know either." I keep this with me today. Before I run my code for the first time or turn on my hardware for the first time, I ask myself, "What _exactly_ am I expecting to see here?" and if I can't answer that it makes me take a closer and more adversarial look at my own output before running it.
by Schlagbohrer
3/16/2026 at 1:54:49 PM
Isn't this the whole idea of TDD? Write your assertions, then write the code the fulfill it.by swat535
3/16/2026 at 1:31:01 PM
I'm not 100% convinced, while iterating fast on an early prototype, what's wrong with legitimately not knowing what e.g. the data structure will end up looking? Just let it run, check debugger/stdout/localhost page and adjust: "Oh, right, the entries are missing canonical IDs, but at the same time there are already all the comments in them, forgot they would be there – neat". What's wrong with that? Especially at uni, when working on low-stakes problems.by Tenemo
3/16/2026 at 2:31:52 PM
> what's wrong with legitimately not knowing what e.g. the data structure will end up looking?But that's not what the above comment said.
> Just let it run, check debugger/stdout/localhost page and adjust: "Oh, right, the entries are missing canonical IDs, but at the same time there are already all the comments in them, forgot they would be there
So you did have an expectation that the entries should have some canonical IDs, and anticipated/desired a certain specific behavior of the system.
Which is basically the meaning of "what will the output be?" when simplified for programming novices at university.
by ssivark