Brian Harvey

A lecturer in the ComputerScience division at CalBerkeley. The author of a SchemeLanguage textbook entitled SimplyScheme, and a three-volume set of LogoLanguage books entitled ComputerScienceLogoStyle. His homepage is at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/.

An interesting thought about planning and design in ComputerScienceLogoStyle Volume 1 Chapter 13:

It's not that we're against planning. On the contrary! Planning is one of the most fundamental problem-solving skills. But there are many kinds of planning. The kind in which every part of your program's behavior is written down before you begin programming isn't very realistic in many contexts. Even in the large-scale business or government projects that structured programmers like to talk about, it's very common that the ultimate users of a program change their minds about how it should work, once they have some experience with using it. The wise programmer will anticipate these changing requirements in the original planning process. Still, one never anticipates everything; a sensible person faced with an unexpected change in requirements will be flexible enough to modify the initial plan, not start all over again. And it's even more true for people like you, who are just learning to program, that the "goal" of a programming project is exploratory rather than predetermined.

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