Attendees:
I'm the new guy, but I'll describe what went on: More of the same - NovemberMeetingTwoThousandThree This parser problem is one of those that gnaws on you until you get it. We all want so badly to use sheer TDD/TFD to derive the parser instead of just falling back on our algorithms schooling. So, we worked on it some more.
This time we learned from last time's lesson - we were fairly good at having pairs only mean 2 people, not 3 or 4 or 5. The problem was we only had one laptop so that meant only one pair working at a time.
After a long bit of frustrating work, we had not progressed much further and so it really was "more of the same" from last month.
Things I learned (that night, and working through the problem later):
- Do not be afraid to throw the code out, take a step back, and redo your algorithm if your tests are showing you that it is not easily "fixable". We had a huge stop in our development rythm, and should take that as a clue that maybe a major refactor is necessary.
- Listen to your pair. I heard some suggestions being offered that would have helped us to move forward, had we acted on them.