Prototype

[mishako]

Before we start developing Rome 2 for real I suggest doing throwaway prototyping.

The idea is to quickly implement as much of the desired functionality as possible, use it as sort of a learning experience and, with improved knowledge, throw away the prototype and write the real thing from scratch.

I believe there is something to learn from prototyping every single feature we have planned. We need to be fast though, so let's save development time where possible, for example:

• Support two different formats (e.g. Atom and JSON Feed)
• Support two versions of one of the formats
• In each version parse only a handful of fields
• Not focus on code quality

I would like to stress that the list above applies only to the prototype. My intention is to reduce the time needed to write it, while still exercising all possible use cases.