How to validate software design? [closed]

Question

I am pretty alone at my workplace when it comes to thinking about the overall design of the applications we're building. I don't have anybody to discuss the pros and cons with different frameworks, technologies, patterns, layering and so on with. The other programmers either don't care or thinks "the old way" is fine, which it isn't because those applications are hard to maintain, not testable, etc.

Any thoughts on how I can find like-minded, get applications reviewed or...? I'd rather not change employer but that is not excluded.

Answer 1

Ill break your question down into two pieces:
1) One is that you are working with people who either don't care or don't understand design to question or give input. If people don't care, there isn't much you can do about that (other than find a different job). If they don't understand, I would say that maybe you could put together a presentation on design and get them up to speed, so you can have those "is this a good design" conversations.
2) If you are looking for physical validation, what I usually find that helps is doing some prototyping. This gives you a good idea usually of any unforeseen problems that might be in your design.

Answer 2

You can talk with them to see if they are willing to do Unit Testing. Tell them that it will help them catch bugs quicker if they approach it from a test-driven development point of view -- which is absolutely true.

Unfortunately, this is something you need to talk to about with your manager and other programmers to figure out what the best solution is. Many places don't do any testing, and it is disappointing.

In the end though, testing is the best thing you can do to validate software.

Do realize that learning new frameworks and adapting to them does take time away from getting the project finished. Research into new languages is something I often see programmers doing on their own dime, or, they are so busy with work they don't have the energy to look into new things after hours.