I'm a small business programmer. I love solving tough problems with Python and PHP. If you like what you're seeing, you should probably follow me here on dev.to and then checkout my blog.
Some functional languages (or subsets) can be formally proved/verified for correctness but I don't know much about that.
I love Quickcheck for property-based testing. We don't have a lot of code where it's a good fit but we have a few property-based tests in PHP. However, Quickcheck is much more powerful in a functional language. The minimum counter-example is particularly helpful in exposing errors in an easily digestible form.
Building the wrong thing is always a risk (even if you do careful requirements gathering and analysis). And if you took 5x more time to build it properly/correctly/carefully, it stings that much more when you find out that nobody needs what you built.
I've had experiences similar to yours where the customer presents his solution to the problem. And I've been burned by not digging deeper too. I've saved myself a lot of grief over the years when I started asking "what exactly are you trying to accomplish" when a customer presents a solution instead of a need/problem.
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Thanks for sharing your experiences, Kasey.
Some functional languages (or subsets) can be formally proved/verified for correctness but I don't know much about that.
I love Quickcheck for property-based testing. We don't have a lot of code where it's a good fit but we have a few property-based tests in PHP. However, Quickcheck is much more powerful in a functional language. The minimum counter-example is particularly helpful in exposing errors in an easily digestible form.
Building the wrong thing is always a risk (even if you do careful requirements gathering and analysis). And if you took 5x more time to build it properly/correctly/carefully, it stings that much more when you find out that nobody needs what you built.
I've had experiences similar to yours where the customer presents his solution to the problem. And I've been burned by not digging deeper too. I've saved myself a lot of grief over the years when I started asking "what exactly are you trying to accomplish" when a customer presents a solution instead of a need/problem.