Ratcheting

You know the final version will be very complicated. But you need to get going. It is way too long to lay out a full and complete low or medium level design. You’ll just have to wing it.

The best idea is to rough-in the structure and layers first.

Take the simplest case that is reflective of the others. Not a “trivial” special case, but something fairly common, but not too ugly. Skip the messy bits.

Code the overall structure. End to end, but not fully fleshed out.

Then take something it is not yet doing and fill in more details. Not all of them, just more. If there are little bugs, fix them immediately but do it correctly. If it means refactoring stuff underneath, do it now. Do not cheat the game, as it will hurt later if you do.

Then just keep that up, moving around, making it all a little more detailed, a little more complicated. Keep making sure that what’s there always works really well. Build on that.

Ratchet up step by step. Small focus changes, fix any bugs large or small. Make sure the core is always strong. Sprinkle in more and more complexity.

This is not the fastest way to code. It causes a lot of refactoring. It requires consistency. You need to be diligent and picky. You might cycle dozens of times, depending on the final complexity, but that gives you lots of chances to edit it carefully. The code has to be neat and tidy. This is the opposite of throw away code.

Although it takes longer, I usually find that since the quality is far better, the testing and bugs get hugely reduced, usually saving more time than lost.