Yesterday was horrible. I couldn’t wrap my head around the problem we were given for homework. I felt bad for my partner because I wasn’t much help. We couldn’t figure out which pieces we needed, let alone where they were supposed to go.

Today was the exact opposite. Once we received our assignment, I got it right away. My partner for the day was none other than Kaitlyn Hova. (Check out her website, she does amazing things!) We had a plan, and were on the same page right away.

We got to work and started writing our test cases. I should let you know that our instructor is trying to get us to use Test Driven Development for our assignments. That’s where you write a test before you write any actual code. It can be hard to understand at first, but totally made sense today. We were able to come up with about 20 tests for our program. As we changed something here or there a test that used to pass would fail, and that is a good thing. Since we had automated test cases that validated our entire program every time it ran, we knew instantly if our change broke another part of the program. We would find the issue and fix it so that our tests would pass again before moving on.

Since we were cruising, it didn’t take us long to finish our initial assignment. Unfortunately, we were sitting right next to our instructor. Every time he heard us mention that we were about done, he updated the assignment’s requirements to add something else. We barely skipped a beat and knocked them out too.

Today was one of the more satisfying days in my adult life. It feeds something deep inside and makes you want to wake up tomorrow and do it all again. I hope these days become more frequent in my life. They are awesome!