Programming, day 1

After coming up with the idea of Driven, it's time to start writing the code.  Or is it?  I have an idea, but right now the idea has nothing solid.  Like most great ideas, it's just that: an idea.  I can't write much of a program based off some random idea.  What to do?  I guess it's time to start writing a design document. 

The purpose of a design document is pretty simple: write down what you want and describe how you want the program to work.  I'd love to just start throwing down code, but I'm not that good at Java and the idea behind this program is considerable more complex than anything I've done in a while.  Besides, everything else I've done has turned out to be a colossal kludged mess.  I'd much rather finish this project and it end up being everything I wanted. 

As for an IDE, I've chosen to use NetBeans for this project.  I've tried Eclipse before, and it seemed to work fairly well, but...  Yeah, there's always a but.  I don't like the way auto-complete works in Eclipse.  I find it hard to select the completion I want without using the mouse.  If I wanted to use a mouse, I would be hunting and pecking.  When I want to code, I want to code as quickly as possible.  

The second reason I'm not going to use Eclipse this time is Eclipse seems to have quit working on my computer.  I'm not sure why, but it doesn't.  Won't even open.  Maybe because I've quit updating Java and am going to sit and hold at Java 6 Update 18 because of work requirements.  That's probably it.

I'm not completely conversed in NetBeans, so I'm not terribly sure how to do everything in it.  Rather than have a separate document for the design doc, I used create a new file and simply made it a text file.  So now, attached to the project is a TXT document that will give me the opportunity to work on the documentation from within the project.  Is there a better way to do this?  Beats me.  But it works for me, so that's what I'll do.

The complexity of a design document can go in many different directions.  The document can be just a few lines long or hundreds of pages, describing every single thing about a project.  I'm not sure where this design document is going.  Right now, it's a matter of deciding and describing what needs to be there.  For a complex project, unless there is prior thought and intention, there is no telling how the project with end up.

So the idea is created, and the design document is started.  It will probably take a few weeks to get the design document far enough along to be of any use.