Just in Time Coding

[kee nethery]

Since my software is only used internally, I use my strategy of  
halting on an assertion and sending me an email for just in time coding.

When the data stream is out of what I wrote code for, it halts and  
tells me about it.

Lets say that 98% of all the data my code will see is about  
elephants. I know there are other animals I will have to code for  
differently but they do not happen that frequently and I really want  
to get this code working. I'll write the code, test for elephants,  
and have all the elephant code well tested and running. If the code  
sees something other than elephants, it halts and sends me email. It  
is quite satisfying to retire a piece of code and see that the other  
assertions never happened and to know I did not waste any time coding  
for them. It is also much easier for me to code for another animal  
when I have a live sample of that data coming at my software. So  
either way, it's efficient for me.

This just in time coding works best when I control the users but I'm  
imagining that it could work with paying customer kinds of users. You  
could put up an alert that says something like:

"Hello, this software program does not have the ability today to  
perform the action you are requesting. If you will permit me to do  
so, I contact the software author site to see if a more recently  
released software version has this capability."

If you number all your assertions, you could send the assertion  
number and see if that was removed in a later version and if so, tell  
them to download that later version. If the assertion is still in the  
list, then step two could be:

"Hello, the current version of this software program does not have  
the ability today to perform the action you are requesting. If you  
will permit me to do so, I will email a copy of your data to the  
software author, along with your email address, and the software  
author will use your data as a test case to write code to perform the  
action you are requesting. You will hear back from the software  
author this time next week. The data will be kept confidential and  
will be send via a secure channel. If you are still concerned about  
security of your data, create a sample file with content that  
triggers this message and then send us that data."

And then if they agree, email the data and the code.

Just a thought.

Kee Nethery