Look over planned feature set before coding

This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the collaboration category.

Last Updated: 2024-04-23

If I'm given the task of building a job market, starting with building the job posting ability on day 1, the naive way to do things is to just check the requirements for this 1st item (e.g. looking at the designs and seeing what form fields the client had placed there) and then building it.

But what if the email sent out on acceptance of a job post contained extra fields, fields not present in that original form (e.g. a first_name field). Or what if the search filters on the index page assumed availability (or rigid structure) of some fields? These changes affect how to build even the job post page, and it would be most efficient to take them into account from the get go -- even if the client's designs failed to gather the requisitve info needed for these features.

Lesson:

Look ahead at the entire planned set of features when coding something. E.g. Check the design docs, specs, etc.