Hit a wall?? step away from your keyboard written by: Lee Richmond posted on: 14 May 2010
I know a lot of people are already thinking what the hell is this man talking about?
Well recently while working on some tests for an application I've been working on, I found that I had hit a brick wall, in terms of I had to write some tests to ensure that some existing code worked as we intended however none of the tests I had written seemed to test this in the right way, after a while of re-writing said tests and re-writing them again, I finally decided to leave it and move onto something else. In doing this it gave my brain a break from thinking about the problem in hand and as a result when I came back to these tests I realised where I was going wrong and so write the tests which worked and not only that helped me to re-factor the code I was testing.
So my snippet of advice for anyone in a similar situation, if you feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall, don't get bogged down by the problem and let it impede your progress, take a break from it and come back to the problem later.
comments
Lee Richmond posted on14 May 2010
Exactly Caius, I too forget to do this occasionally but no doubt my blog post will serve as a reminder from now on :)
Caius Durling posted on14 May 2010
I find exactly the same thing helps me, going for a cup of tea when you're about ready to start ranting about something is a good idea. Gives you a break from the machine, and you get a cup of tea to relax you. Winnerz. Now if only I remembered to do this more often.