💡Conception

Recently, I've been reading up on Test Driven Development practices and how it acts as a thinking tool that helps you with:

• managing your stress levels during programming
• thinking about the design of your programs
• managing the scope of your projects

So, I've been trying to apply the principles I learned to my own software and game-dev side projects.

Another handy trick I picked up while learning about TDD was to always maintain a to-do-list of the specs you know that you have to write and implement so that you can pay attention to the work that you're doing in a programming session instead of succumbing to your stress because of the ton of work remaining.

Then, it struck me. Since I've been using to-do lists a lot, wouldn't it be cool if I build an application that I can use to make to-do lists for my side-projects, while applying these concepts!

✍️Development

Before I wrote the first line of code, I defined the domain by pondering the following questions:

• What should I be able to do with the finished version of the project?
• What is the domain, what are the concepts that exist within it, and how do they interact with one another?
• What are the behaviors that these concepts should display?

Once the domain abstractions were modeled, I set up a Model View Controller (MVC) architecture such that:

• The domain layer deals only with domain types
• The view, which handles user inputs and outputs, only accepts primitive types
• The controller orchestrates the flow of data from the domain and views layers with the help of a Parser and Renderer.

Primitive Type → Parser → Domain Type

Domain Type → Renderer → Primitive Type

I've also created Components for reusable UI elements so that rendering the necessary information and setting up event listeners is easier.