A New Perspective

"I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective." --Stephen Hawking 

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." --Marcus Aurelius 

This  article falls more heavily under the "Musings" title of my blog. I'm less making a point than I am thinking out loud. As always, feedback and insights are always welcome.

My job responsibilities are changing. I phrase it like that because I doubt my actual title will change, merely the meaning of that title. I rarely handle project level work anymore. Rather, I'm more involved with enterprise level architecture decisions. I haven't implemented a design pattern in quite awhile. I find myself, instead, setting the standard of what patterns are best to use or avoid in certain situations. Or what frameworks we will be using or whether we will use an off the shelf solution or build our own. In other words, my implementation decisions are becoming less important than my opinions and experience with those decisions. I find this a very new perspective and more than anything else, I find myself more and more writing about new perspectives on old ideas.

For instance, take our current investigation into unit tests. The discussion started with "What mock object framework should we use?" We quickly boiled down to "Which framework will be unduly burdensome to the development staff?" This actually eliminated a couple of frameworks at the beginning. But when we settled on two that are, more or less, of equal use the conversation quickly changed to unit test standards. I have a few strong opinions on the matter. I believe that unit tests should cast a wide loop so that behavior consistency can be assured. If that means mocking Internal methods to assure their consistency, then so be it. If that means only using strict mock objects, despite their fragility, then so be it. In fact, I like fragile unit tests. If the behavior of the class changes then the tests should break. I realize that my opinions are not shared by the community at large, and I'm okay with that. I'm always open to debate, but I approach things somewhat differently than normal. I think I've made that clear. Now, of our enterprise level architects, one disagrees with me and the other is still weighing arguments and that's great. That kind of conversation is a new perspective for me.

So what's this new perspective and what does it give me? Because I'm no longer considering patterns and practices for a given set of circumstances, but rather to be followed in the enterprise, I have to more seriously consider the pros and cons of those patterns and practices. I find that thinking of effects of standards on the enterprise at large makes me think differently about the effects of my design decisions at the project level. Not just "Does this work here" but "Would this work in other, similar, situations and if not, why not?" If the answer to the second question is "No", then should I reconsider my decisions at the project level. Note that I'm not offering concrete conclusions here. I'm expanding my perspective and thus expanding the pool of questions I ask myself before making a decision.

Maybe that's my point here, although I expect I'll be getting comments about my approach to unit tests. That's fine, too. The day I stop listening to others is the day I stop being useful.