I knew that the guys who wrote Pragmatic Programmer had an important point regarding having a source control system.

I mean, the number of times I can remember launching into a needless “treasure” hunt on why something suddenly stops working, or compiles, and it was because I left just one statement, just barely outside of a while loop, and it slipped right underneath it, so it was always being called. (and most of these times, was with Python, where I accidentally un-indented something :/ )
With source control (as you know), it’s “1,2,3″ — you just diff your current version with the last commit, and you see what you did. And you find it immediately

I finally got subversion installed today at home. (yes, my world is exciting)

I think I looked at my home projects with less respect, than my work projects, and thus decided that it’s not important to have source control at home. But time is time and I don’t want to waste it at home, no less at work.
If you have Windows XP, you can install it now. The following parts are needed:

-Subversion server, -The client, -TortoiseSVN (if you want a snazzy explorer interface), and -A specific way to install all of this. Don’t click on that link down there, yet. The vast majority of this web page will not be needed.

Look at the top, where it says: “Update: This Guide is now largely obsolete, because Brian wrote an installer that will do all this stuff for you….” , etc..

That’s what you want. Go ahead and click.
http://www.excastle.com/blog/archive/2005/05/31/1048.aspx

But come back here after you’re through, because you still need some of the instructions that are listed in the body of the web page!

The one-shot installation program pretty much does it for you. So you won’t have to go into the Service applet in Windows to start, or set anything on auto-run. That’s already done. (prove it to yourself, after running the installation file.. bring up the windows task manager, processes tab, and you’ll see: svnservice.exe).

You won’t have to do the step regarding “svn_repos ” .

What you will need to do is: Follow his user/password instructions regarding the files in the conf directory.

Under IV (Start the server manually, and create a project), go straight to step. 2 (Open a second command window, and type svn mkdir svn://localhost/monkey)

Under V (Start the server for real), go straight to step 6 and do that stuff with the command line. Skip the rest.
Under VI (Install TortoiseSVN), skip 1 and go straight to step 2.

That’s it.

Even though Tortoise does a nice job with interfacing with Subversion, I think I’m going to stick with command line (reference: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.tour.cycle.html). I’m just more of a command line type of person. (I almost talked myself into getting 4DOS, even, but didn’t go that far)
I’ve also added all of the source files for my current little utility project that I’m developing in C#, a small Winforms program.

But I think, today, it’s back to the book I recently bought: Test-Driven Development by Kent Beck. It’s a very friendly, approachable, interesting journey through a couple of good real case-study test-first challenges.

The first example describes Ward Cunningham’s usage of unit tests, and how he was able to very quickly add a feature that a client requested, which would have taken much, much longer if it weren’t for the care taken in how he abstracted his objects, and the time taken to write his already-existing unit tests.

(I think is the one of the “goldmine” significances of having the unit tests. If a customer wants a new feature, like yesterday, you can add it quickly, and you have your arsenal of automated unit tests that will make sure everything else still works)

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